

> 




•} 


I* 


0 


< 






t 


t 


r 


t 


4 


f 


i 


% 



I 


(' ' 


* 


I 


, > 


\ 

• » 




^ 9 




( 


Copyright })? 1_ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV 


» ‘ 

• » . 

« » 


< ■ ' 



. i ^ 

i • ’ . *• 

• 1 

I . '•' 


•* 

« 


'. • *. . 


I 





/f 7 

rrj 



THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


OTHER BOOKS BY 
PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

r 

Ye Lyttle Salem Maide^ Mademoiselle de Berny 
The Washingtonians 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


By PAULINE BRADFORD (MACKIE^ 

[Mr.!?. Yierhert M.uller Ylopkim^ 



York: McClure, Phillips and Company 
MCMIII 


THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

APR 6 1903 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS XXc. No 

fu-r- 

I COPY B. 



COPTBIGHT, 1903, BY 
McCLXJRE, PHILLIPS & CO. 


Published, March, 1903, R 


• » 
• • 


• # 



• ) 


• A • « • • J • 

• • • ♦ 

• > • > O • 


• » • • 

• • • 

• • • • 

• » • * 
• • » • • 



TO HERBERT, IN 
MEMORY OF OUR 
DAYS ON THE DESERT 



r 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 









V -:' - i .']'. ■■■ 






i;» ’wif ^ 


'.1 


f » 


I - »' 


X ’ 


t 


I '• « 


/? 


/ ’ 'V il ** 


.’r » 



I r 



' . V '■♦ •’/; mV ' J : 




• V 


* \ y ' 


, *.1 


V ; 


,\ 


'iV'- ■'?* 

■ ‘ -Mi-; 


K» 


I ■ V /■ ^ 


' a - . - aV -•>■ ’ ‘ ■ ■ ' 





.•V 

**' j0k \** >. 


■ • >• * V V vVy;fv'\ v 

' ^ '■ : ■ m 

\* \\0 ■ ■ ,■ - ‘\i iv i ay 


Cf/ •• / ' .'•'>yT ‘ ' • . < 





"‘•..A . :;'■' .' 















CHAPTER I 


I T was twilight on the desert. The mountains which 
had crouched dull and vague at noon gained in 
magnificence and height as the shadows deepened. 
Great clefts and towering edges appeared, purple in 
the depths, rose on the peaks. The desert stretched 
away level to the horizon and there caught some re- 
flection of the glowing west. It was like a strange 
lifeless sea on which the light lay, but did not pene- 
trate. The sky at the zenith was still bright blue, but 
it no longer looked hot. Coolness had come with the 
setting of the sun. The desert air, wonderful, dry, 
life-giving, swayed the palms and pepper trees that 
bordered the plaza of the little town of Sahuaro; it 
stirred the road into miniature sand-whirls and blew 
soft into the faces of the people who were waiting for 
the train. The depot, set in the centre of the plaza, 
looked like an old Louisiana home. The second story 
was used as an hotel, and had a balcony very gay with 
flower-boxes. 

Twice a day the great Overland swept by the town, 
stopping only long enough to afford its passengers 
breakfast and supper. 

A short time before the train was due there came 
down the road a pretty and charming woman between 

[ 1 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

two boys. She held a hand of each and listened with a 
smile to what the older boy was saying. All three 
were bare-headed. The boys’ blond hair was bleached 
to tow-colour, and already at their blue eyes showed 
the crow’s-feet that comes from living in a land of sun- 
shine. 

Haydon, the station-master, gave the lady his com- 
fortable armchair when she came up on the platform. 
He was a Southerner, and his traditional hospitality of 
nature made him feel himself the host of these occa- 
sions. 

“ Reckon you’re later than common this evening. 
Mis’ Lispenard,” he remarked. 

She acknowledged his greeting with a smile as she 
sank into the chair. “ Run along and play, chicks,” 
she told the children. She gave the youngest a gentle 
push. “ Go along with Jim, Tiggy. Mamma doesn’t 
want you hanging on her all the time.” 

The station-master lingered, looking out to the 
desert as a captain looks to sea. “ Mighty calm for 
this season of the year,” he said, “ not much wind.” 
He moved away, a lank figure of a man, fine-featured 
but not forceful, a kind of gentleman gone to seed, 
most at ease in the society of boys and his inferiors in 
birth. 

It was the friendly hour of day in Sahuaro, and, 
left alone, Mrs. Lispenard gave herself up to its en- 
joyment. The very greenness of the plaza had a spir- 
[ 2 ] 


CHAPTER ONE 


itual effect upon her ; she liked the stir of life that the 
strolling people gave ; the tinkle of a Mexican’s man- 
dolin ; the pink afterglow of the sky seen through the 
spiked leaves of the bordering palms ; the glimpse of 
blanketed Indians outside with baskets and pottery to 
sell to the incoming passengers. She nodded an 
amused good-evening to the telegraph operator, who 
leant out of his window talking to his girl, and smiled 
at a young ranchman and his wife who had a pail of 
new milk for sale at five cents a dipperful. Their 
baby was in its buggy. They were parishioners of her 
husband’s, and she had been the baby’s godmother 
when it was baptised. Near them was the old Mexican 
woman with her basket of hot tamales. Now and then 
she clucked to the baby and dangled her rosary in its 
face. The steam came through the white cotton cloth 
laid neatly over the tamales. 

Two cowboys clattered down the stairs from the 
hotel dining room, and taking chairs at a respectful 
distance from Mrs. Lispenard tilted them back against 
the wall and lit long black cigars. 

Thus she continued to sit aloof, although knowing 
herself to be most welcome, reserved, yet conscious that 
her personality expressed a gracious, feminine desire 
to please. Her brown hair was brought up high on her 
head in a loose twist; her skin was not as fair as it 
should be for her eyes, but she had a rich and glowing 
colour and a handsome throat left bare by a black 
[ 3 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

lace scarf crossed like a kerchief over her breast and 
fastened with a crimson rose. Her calico dress, made 
in a fashion of several years ago and received in a mis- 
sionary-box, was freshly laundered and faded to a 
lavender. She kept her feet drawn in beneath the 
flounce. Her shoes were not only cracked, but the 
leather was worn to a distasteful brown. 

The great Overland came rushing into the little 
station like a black monster, pufflng and steaming, 
its red eye blazing. Far more congruous with the land- 
scape would have been a caravan of camels approach- 
ing from out the mysterious East. Where all had been 
a leisurely expectancy now all was bustle and confu- 
sion. The supper-bell rung from the balcony above 
rose superior to all other sounds. The passengers came 
hurrying out; those who had dined on the train to 
stroll about the plaza for fresh air and to bargain 
with the Indians. But the majority were frankly con- 
cerned over something to eat, and those who did not 
go upstairs took draughts of the new milk and bought 
tamales of the old woman, who sold them six for a 
quarter. The big engine was uncoupled and driven up 
to the red-painted water-tank to have its boiler 
filled. 

Mrs. Lispenard had drawn her chair back and sat 
unnoticed. She watched the different faces eagerly. 
The Pullman conductor took off his cap to her as he 
hurried down from supper. 

[ 4 ] 


CHAPTER ONE 


All too soon the excitement of the day was past, and 
the Overland swept on from out the warmly pulsating 
little town into the desolate waste of sand, of cacti, of 
barren mountain. 

The afterglow had gone from the sky and the 
mountain peaks, and wildness encroached upon the 
green little plaza. A note of dreariness was creeping 
into the landscape. It seemed to find some faint re- 
flection in the lady’s face. She sighed and brushed 
back a straying curl of her soft hair. For fifteen 
years she had watched the train come and go, and never 
once had she welcomed a friend. How many more 
times was she doomed to feel afresh that sting of hu- 
miliation and disappointment, the rebuff Fate dealt 
her romantic imaginings.^ She was mortified at her 
own weakness in coming. The platform was now 
deserted save for herself. The boys had gone to the 
drug-store, which was the post-office as well. It would 
be nearly an hour before the distribution of the mail 
was finished. 

While she waited the moon rose, the orange moon 
of the desert, gibbous-shaped at the horizon. It sent 
a broad pathway of light across the sands and put a 
silver sheen on the foothills. The note of dreariness 
which had slipped into the landscape vanished. The 
hour she sat there seemed neither long nor short to her. 
Patience had ceased to be a virtue. The lack of any 
need for haste in her life destroyed that. 

[ 5 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

The boys came back finally with the mail. There 
was only a circular for their father. 

“ Just one man got off the train to-night,” Jim in- 
formed her. “ Hay don says he’s taken a room and lie 
bets he’s an Easterner come out to look after some 
mines. Anyway, he isn’t an invalid.” 

“ Well, I’m glad for that,” she answered. 

The three started slowly homeward. The boys had 
learned to recognise an inevitable change of mood in 
their mother. She always started out like a girl to a 
party and returned home with them quiet and de- 
pressed. 

The increasing brilliancy of the rising moon seemed 
to show the air still full of the sunset colours. She 
could see the roofs of the adobe houses which, low as 
they were, yet showed above the shrub-like trees. She 
saw the pathetic spire of her husband’s church, pa- 
thetic, because it was no more effective in the landscape 
than a splintered spar tossing at sea. 

Tiggy’s feet lagged. 

“ Let mother carry you, precious,” said Mrs. Lis- 
penard. She lifted him up in her arms. She was very 
strong and she carried him lightly. Her pretty van- 
ity of appearance was gone, and she stepped along 
firmly in her rusty, run-over shoes. 

Tiggy’s thin fingers thrust themselves under the lace 
fichu and slipped around until his arm fastened firmly 
about her neck. Then with his head on her shoulder 
[ 6 ] 


CHAPTER ONE 

he lay staring across at the moon. His resemblance 
to his father had never been more apparent to her. 

“ Shut your eyes, Tiggy,” she said. “ Haven’t I 
told you that little boys shouldn’t look too much at 
the moon ? It makes them luny .” 

Jim gave an exuberant shout. “ Luny Tiggy ! ” 
he cried. He had his mother’s love of fun, and wel- 
comed eagerly the least approach to a jest. 

Someone was coming up the sidewalk back of 
them. 

“ Want to know who that is.? ” said Jim. “ I can 
tell you. It’s the man who stayed over here. I know 
because he steps so quick. Us Sahuaro people take it 
more easy.” 

“ You know an awful lot, don’t you?” said Tiggy 
calmly. 

“ Where did you learn to be so observing, Jim, 
dear? ” asked his mother. 

“ Oh, I learned all right,” he answered mysteri- 
ously. “ I can walk along the streets with my eyes 
closed and tell just who it is passes me. Cozzens says 
he can tell an enemy coming up behind and can draw a 
bead on him without even looking back over his 
shoulder.” 

“ If you call Mr. Cozzens, Cozzens again, I shall 
punish you,” said his mother. 

Jim frowned and kicked at a tuft of the coarse 
grass growing up between the planks of the side- 

[ 7 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

walk. He felt he was too old to be reproved by his 
mother as though he were Tiggy. 

“ I suppose the stranger’s come out to see the 
sights of this wonderful town as well as his mining 
property,” she said, teasing him. 

She glanced back over her shoulder. Of whom did 
the man approaching remind her.?^ What could there 
be familiar to her in the tall figure Yet she felt her 
heart beating fast. 

“ I don’t care what you say,” Jim was saying, loyal 
to his birthplace, which he had never yet left. “ I 
like Sahuaro better than any other town in the 
world.” 

She flung back her head and laughed, her pretty 
teasing laugh. She could coquet with Jim in lieu of 
anyone else, but now her laughter was intended for the 
ears of the approaching stranger. 

About to pass, he turned, startled, and looked at 
her. Their eyes met. Her laughter died on her lips. 
They stood staring in amazement at each other, and 
the little lads, reflecting their mother’s surprise, were 
silent, too. Tiggy raised himself in her arms, half- 
smiling, but Jim was a trifle aggressive. Mrs. Lis- 
penard was first to break the silence, and her voice 
shook. “ Why, Jarvey,” she cried ; “ why, Jarvis 
Trent.” Her eyes shone with eager desire to be re- 
membered. “ Don’t you remember me ? ” they queried 
mutely, “me, Adele.?” 

[ 8 ] 


CHAPTER ONE 


Adele,” he said at last, hesitatingly. 

“ Yes,” she answered, almost with a sob, so great 
was her relief. There had been a moment of tragic 
suspense when she feared he would not know her. And 
if Jarvis Trent did not recognise her the desert must, 
indeed, have robbed her of all her old charm and 
beauty ! 

“ You were the last person in the world I expected 
to see here,” he said slowly, “ although I knew you 
went West when you married, and Lispenard wrote 
once or twice and then dropped the correspondence. 
You are not changed.” 

“ But you are, Jarvey,” she said soberly ; ‘‘ I can see 
even now you are different. Do you believe in pre- 
monitions.^ I must have felt it was you. I could not 
have known just by your figure and walk, could I.^ 
You never heard from us because we got lost in the 
desert. We have been fifteen years in this forlorn 
town. Think of it.” 

“ Sahuaro has doubled in population in the last ten 
years,” put in Jim. 

“ Jim and I love Sahuaro,” added Tiggy. 

“ Poor babies, you see how provincial they are,” she 
said, smiling. “ How glad Theodore will be to see 
you. And I was deploring that I had no letter for 
him ! We live right on this street. Jim, dear, this is 
father’s friend, Mr. Trent.” 

“ Well, I’m taken back, you bet,” said Jim. 

[ 9 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ There Hajdon and I were speculating on what you 
might be, and concluded you were a mine owner.” 

“ I’m not as important as that, Jim,” Trent an- 
swered, shaking hands with the boy “ He looks like 
your family, your father, I think,” he added to Mrs. 
Lispenard. 

She was pleased. “ I think so,” she assented. 

“ Let me carry the little fellow for you,” he said. 

She relinquished Tiggy with a sigh of relief. She 
was not in the least tired, but it suited her to be fem- 
inine and appealing. 

“ What’s the reason you can’t walk, young man ? ” 
asked Trent, looking down upon the boy transferred 
to his arms. 

Tiggy put up his hand and drew it gently down the 
cheek of this new friend. “ Mamma likes to carry 
me,” he answered. 

“She does, does she.?” Trent rejoined. “Well, 
you just trot on ahead there with your brother.” He 
put the child down on his feet. “ I might know how 
you would be with your children, Adele,” he added, 
looking at her affectionately ; “ slap them one minute 
and spoil them the next, as you did your lovers.” 

“ Was I as bad as that.? ” she answered. 

The two boys went on ahead. 

She put a detaining hand on his arm. “ Think of 
it, Jarvey,” she cried ; “ yours is the first face of an 
old friend I’ve seen in fifteen years. The first face 

[ 10 ] 


CHAPTER ONE 


from home in fifteen years! Don’t you notice the 
smell of the desert ? It has been in my nostrils all this 
time. It is in my hair, in my clothes, in my handker- 
chief even.” She waved it as she spoke to the two 
little lads, who were looking back. “ Run on, chicks ; 
mother’s coming. Don’t tell father there is anyone 
with us. We’ll surprise him.” 

“ Is this Lispenard’s church we are passing ? ” asked 
Trent. He was distressed by her tears, and for her 
sake wished to change the subject. Fifteen years in 
the desert ! All those years without seeing a face from 
home I And yet he thought with some sadness that he 
had never considered the city he lived in his home in 
the sense it once was before she married and went 
away. 

“ Oh, no,” she answered ; “Theodore’s is only a little 
chapel. This is one of the landmarks of a past civil- 
isation. It is an old Roman Catholic mission. See 
how broken it is.” She stopped to point out to him 
the frail balconies distinct in the moonlight. “ The 
old floor is quite gone, but there are still some wonder- 
ful paintings on the wall, and in the tower are the 
bronze bells which still hold their sweet tones.” 

He was looking down at her in an abstracted way, 
almost as if he did not see her. 

“ It is a quaint and melancholy place,” she said, as 
they went on. “We must show it to you in the day- 
time. Here is where we live, right next to it.” 

[ 11 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


She opened the gate of a low adobe house set well 
back from the street in the shadow of the old mission. 

“ I don’t notice any smell of the desert,” Trent said, 
“ unless it’s this heavy fragrance.” 

“ You never had any imagination, Jarvey,” she re- 
torted. “ You have to have something as powerful as 
the magnolia. But I’ll forgive you anything, even 
your lack of sympathy. I’m so glad to see you. And 
how delighted Theodore will be.” 

“ Hurry up,” cried Jim, “ we can’t wait forever. 
I’m going to open the door now.” He burst in with 
a whoop, Tiggy a close second, and Trent, as much 
touched as he was amused and embarrassed, followed 
Mrs. Lispenard into the house. 


[ 12 ] 


CHAPTER II 


L ISPENARD was unchanged; Trent saw that 
at once. It was the same youthful, almost 
boyish figure that rose from behind the table 
and came forward, the blond hair slightly rumpled as 
of old, the remembered smile touched now by puzzle- 
ment. The distancing fifteen years, the hurt that 
he had let their correspondence languish, ceased to 
exist, and Trent felt his heart leap as it had when he 
met Adele. 

“ He doesn’t know who it is,” she cried. “ Why, 
Theodore, where are your eyes.? It’s Jarvis Trent.” 

“ Dear old fellow,” cried Lispenard, shaking him by 
both hands, “ can you ever forgive me.? I never was 
more surprised in my life.” 

“ Nor I,” answered his friend ; “ I remembered your 
wife’s laugh.” 

She laughed again and blushed, standing with an 
arm about each of her boys. 

“ I believe you’ve grown younger,” Trent con- 
tinued, laying his hand on his friend’s shoulder, “ and 
I can’t yet realise the fact that these two splendid 
boys are yours.” 

“ Come and sit down by the fire,” Mrs. Lispenard 
said, pushing up a big chair. “ Now, chicks, mother 
[ 13 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

will give you just five minutes to get into bed. You 
can say good-night to-morrow morning. Excuse me 
a minute, won’t you, Jarvey.? I’m going out to get 
you something to eat.” 

“ Thank you,” he answered, ‘‘ I had supper at the 
depot. I don’t know that I ever saw a place before 
which combined both station and hotel. I’ve taken a 
room there.” 

“You’ll enjoy Hay don,” said Lispenard ; “ he’s 
what might be called a motherly soul. Well, if you’re 
not hungry we must have a little wine for the stom- 
ach’s sake, anyway.” 

“ I’m not sure that I want to get very near the fire,” 
Trent said, taking the chair Mrs. Lispenard had 
dragged forward for him. “ It seems warm to me.” 

“ I know, but you’d find it chilly without a fire in 
these adobe houses. Still, my lamp often gives heat 
enough, but we think a fire is cheerful,” his host re- 
joined. “ Will you try a pipe? ” He stood drawing 
a cleaner through the stem of the pipe he was about 
to offer him. The lamp-light shone on his scholarly 
white hands and his worn gray study-coat. “ I shall 
never forget when we were first married that Mrs. 
Lispenard undertook to scrub my pipes in soap and 
water. I don’t believe she got the nicotine off her 
fingers for weeks, and I am sure she’s never forgiven 
me.” 

Trent laughed. “ To think of my dropping down 

[ 14 ] 


CHAPTER TWO 


upon you like this. I never heard of such luck.” He 
moved his chair a little further from the fire and set 
rocking a low chair near by. A gold thimble rolled to 
the floor from out the sewing-basket which had been 
left in the seat. He stooped and picked it up. What 
was the vague association it awakened in him? He 
turned it over in his palm and read the initials and 
the date. He had once given it to Adele. Suddenly 
he looked up and met the gaze of a stranger across 
the room. He was amazed that he had not seen it be- 
fore — that young face, oval in shape and pale, the 
hair almost like an aureole, beyond the green globe 
of the lamp. His own eyes encountered briefly a 
watchful regard. Had he seen only the face he might 
even have taken it to be that of a youth — one’s ideal 
poet or painter in his early promise. 

Lispenard looked up puzzled, divining the changed 
atmosphere, noting Trent’s surprise. He followed 
his gaze across the room, and his own face flushed. 

“Can you ever forgive me. Miss Armes.?^” he 
cried. “ I was so carried away with seeing my friend 
that I forgot my manners.” 

Trent thought her extremely gentle and sweet as 
she shook hands with him. Her white dress, with its 
elbow sleeves, was very youthful, its sole ornament 
being a heavy gold army buckle at her waist ; and he 
noticed an officer’s cape flung carelessly on the lounge 
where she had been sitting. “ I was only wishing I 
[ 16 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

might slip out of the room without being seen,” she 
told him. “ Such an old friend made me feel de trop. 
You see, I placed you at once when I heard your name. 
Out here in the desert we even learn to know our 
friends’ friends.” 

He turned from her to look affectionately at Lis- 
penard. “ Then you sometimes thought of me even 
if you never wrote, old fellow.” 

“ I’ll explain why I never wrote,” he answered. 
“ Firstly,” counting off on his fingers, “ I believe in 
the immortality of the soul ; secondly, in that celestial 
life we shall have ample time for converse with those 
friends whose paths here diverged from ours ; thirdly, 
that this fine provision being thus made we should not 
neglect those present by sending wistful outpourings 
on paper to the absent.” 

“ That’s the most cold-blooded excuse I ever heard,” 
Trent retorted ; “ it’s barely decent, but I forgive 
you.” He replaced the thimble in the dainty basket 
which was heaped with some white fabric in which the 
needle glanced. It was so characteristic of Adele. 
The buoyancy of his mood was gone. The reading of 
their joined initials on the little thimble induced a wist- 
ful strain, and the chilling impression of having dis- 
covered a stranger in the room in which he had sup- 
posed himself alone with Lispenard lingered. 

He was conscious, as in their student days, that Lis- 
penard was still talking. 

[ 16 ] 


CHAPTER TWO 


‘‘ I tell you what it is, Trent,” with an airy wave of 
the pipe, “ the desert imposes no limit to the imagina- 
tion, and so we simply carry our neglected correspond- 
ence over into the next world.” 

Trent answered with a slight smile. The reaction 
of his mood made him physically depressed, and he 
felt the strain of his journey for the first time. 

Mrs. Lispenard came in from the dining room car- 
rying a tray. The excitement rendered her more 
charming than ever. The rose at her breast had 
slipped its fastenings, and so she had thrust it care- 
lessly into her hair; she had put on a ruffled white 
apron, which gave the final touch of coquettishness to 
her appearance. Trent regarded her appreciatively; 
love of life was strong in Adele. 

“ I didn’t see you. Yucca,” she cried. “ When did 
you come in.^ ” 

“ I have been here some time,” Miss Armes an- 
swered, piling up the magazines and papers as she 
spoke. “ Shan’t I clear a space for you on the table ” 

“ Yes, thank you.” She stood holding the tray. 
“ Theodore, get another glass and plate from the din- 
ing room, dear. Boys, I’m ashamed of you. Aren’t 
you in bed yet.? ” 

A giggle was the only answer. She looked at 
Trent, and laughed. “ You see that like most mothers 
I have eyes in the back of my head. I know when 
they’re up to mischief.” 

[ 17 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ I don’t suppose they want to go to bed at a 
proper hour any more than we do,” she continued, put- 
ting down the tray. “ Nothing ever irritates me more 
than when at the end of a stupid evening all that re- 
mains is to go to bed. It’s the last straw.” She set the 
dish of fruit from out the laden tray on the table, re- 
arranging it a little, so that the green of the grapes 
and the orange-red of the pomegranates should con- 
trast well with the purple figs. “ Please tell me that 
you never ate ripe figs, for I want you to appreciate 
these to the full. They are delicious.” 

“ Never,” he answered. “ I remember that when 
Lispenard and I went abroad that summer we had a 
chance to buy some ripe figs. But they were out of 
season and expensive, so we gave them up. Those 
were our student days, Miss Armes, when we were 
poor. We went steerage.” 

‘‘ Were ! ” echoed Lispenard, coming back with the 
plate and glass. “ Are you become a Philistine and 
given over to the getting of riches.? Where are your 
treasures in heaven ? I begin to perceive a certain fat- 
ness in you. Ah, I must look after the state of your 
soul. I shall write you such a sermon on the delights 
of poverty that when you hear it you will throw riches 
to the dogs ! 

“ ‘ Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? 

Oh, sweet content ! ’ 

“ You remember that old poem, Jarvey? 

[ 18 ] 


it t 


CHAPTER TWO 

Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed 
To add to golden numbers, golden numbers? ’ 

The riches of poverty ! Being poor, it is possible for 
me to be content, for to be content is to have desires 
which can be satisfied. Who was that delightful 
Frenchman who said he had obtained happiness by the 
moderation of his desires? I wish a certain book, and 
Fortune often favours me with an excellent review of it 
in my newspaper. It is tantalising, but stimulating 
to the imagination. I am actually tempted to go ahead 
and try to write such a book myself for the pleasure of 
possessing it. On Easter my dear wife gets me a new 
tie to go with my old suit, and I am puffed up with 
vanity. And Sundays we have chicken. If we had 
it every day, Jim and Tiggy would become satiated 
and cease to quarrel over the wishbone. Come to din- 
ner Sunday, and you shall have ” 

“ Theodore,” his wife interrupted, joining in the 
laughter, but impatient, “.aren’t you ever going to 
open that claret ? ” 

“ The wishbone ! ” he ended triumphantly, holding 
the bottle between his knees as he drew out the cork. 
“ I was reading the last chapter of my book aloud 
when you two came in, and Miss Armes didn’t like it. 
You’ll have to be victimised, Trent. I want a man’s 
judgment. Like the ancient mariner, I must tell my 
tale. It’s a philosophy.” He filled up their glasses 
and raised his own. “ Your health, old man ! ” 

[ 19 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ I liked it,” Miss Armes protested, “ but not for 
the last chapter. It hadn’t an air of finality. It was 
more like the beginning of another book than the end- 
ing of a completed one.” 

“ That is the way of all intellectual life,” he re- 
torted. “ One philosophy opens into another. It all 
dovetails, so to speak.” 

“ I side with Miss Armes,” Trent said. “ A book 
should be a work of art, well rounded out, leaving the 
reader satisfied by a sense of completion.” 

“ You barely escaped being a pedant when you were 
young, and now there’s danger of your becoming too 
judicial,” said Lispenard. “ I declare you have the 
proportion of a judge, but don’t tell me I look like a 
minister. I don’t wish to be marked as the professional 
good man.” 

His wife was making two sandwiches of crackers 
spread with orange marmalade. She gave Trent a 
glance of mingled humour and resentment. ‘‘ Ever 
since my marriage I’ve had my nose in a pot of j am in 
the desert ! ” She took the crackers in to the boys, 
whose room opened out of the main one. There was a 
whispered consultation, from which she returned smil- 
ing, putting back a lock of hair which had been dis- 
turbed by Tiggy’s ardent hug. “ They’ve promised 
to be good and stay quietly in bed, if I’ll only leave the 
door open. I’m afraid I spoil them, but after all your 
coming is almost as much of an event to the children 
[20 ] 


CHAPTER TWO 

as to us. They are planning great things for your en- 
tertainment. Don’t you like the figs ? ” 

“ I’m afraid Mr. Trent isn’t eating them in the right 
way,” put in Miss Armes. She leant forward. “ May 
I show you.^ ” she asked, taking his fruit knife. “ You 
must take off this thin outside skin, or it will pucker 
your mouth. See, like this. Now try it.” 

He finished peeling it and ate it obediently, but when 
Adele would have urged more of the figs upon him he 
refused. “ I think they’re insipid.” 

“ They’re delicious,” she insisted. “ I shall have 
them for breakfast to-morrow morning, with cream and 
brown bread and coffee. You learn to like them, as 
you do olives, I think.” 

Lispenard heaped more wood on the fire. The large 
room, with its walls of adobe painted a delicate apricot 
tint, no longer seemed too warm to Trent. 

“ This is our library and parlour and Theodore’s 
study, too,” Adele said. “ We have a real old mission 
fireplace, you see, which I bought out of a Spanish 
home here in town. Jim and I made the chairs to go 
with it ourselves, although the chair you’re in is a gen- 
uine antique. I will tell you a secret, but you must 
never, never tell. Theodore’s writing-desk is one of 
the side-altar tables from the old mission of Santa Ines 
next to us. It’s so littered over now that you can’t 
see the magnificent grain of the wood.” 

“ If it were from one of our churches I might con- 

[ 21 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

sider it put to profane use, but as it is we hold it a 
brand snatched from the burning,” remarked Lispen- 
ard. “ It is a fascinating place, this Santa Ines 
in whose shadow we live. You could have no 
better guides than the two boys. It has been their 
play-house. Can you imagine greater riches My 
sons are princes ! It is roofed with numerous domes 
and half-domes of the Venetian-Byzantine school, and 
there is still some half-obliterated frescoing of angels 
and evangelists. And how you will enjoy the painting 
above the main altar! It looks like an old man with 
red, puffed-out cheeks, blowing a column of smoke, but 
it’s really supposed to be God sending down the breath 
of life.” 

“ I am trying to persuade the town to buy it,” said 
Miss Armes. “ The Roman Catholics still own it, al- 
though they have long since abandoned it, because it 
is so old. They have another church here, in the In- 
dian village, and the old priest, through long associa- 
tion, is as much of an Indian as any of his followers. 
You will find that Sahuaro is still largely Mexican and 
Spanish in its traditions, Mr. Trent. I hope it may 
continue so. The very thought of hideous modern 
buildings going up here distresses me.” 

Intensely interested himself in the beautifying of 
his own city, he was struck by her public spirit. He 
thought her interest in architecture unusual in a 
woman. As he looked at her he saw that she was 
[ 22 ] 


CHAPTER TWO 

older than he first thought. Her face had more colour 
now than when he saw its pale oval beyond the green 
globe of the lamp. Her eyes had lost their shadowed 
look and were brighter, yet he was glad when she 
finally rose to go, for he could not shake off the chill 
impression made upon him when he had looked up and 
met her close regard across the room. Her extreme 
gentleness and sweetness of manner showed to him 
only that she was a very well-bred woman. He felt 
himself too keen a j udge of humanity to mistake them 
for qualities of the heart. And he distrusted a watch- 
ful person. She drew about her the old army-cape 
which had been lying on the sofa and turned to say 
good-night to him. 

Her hand rested lightly a moment in his. “ I hope 
you are going to stay some time. You must all come 
over to see me.” 

“ Thank you,” he answered. I shan’t commit my- 
self by telling how long I intended to stay, now that I 
have found my friends. They might get tired of me 
and try to make me hold to my original plan if they 
knew.” 

Lispenard stood, hat in hand, to escort her home. 
“ I will be back in a minute,” he said. 

“ What did I hear you call her.? ” Trent asked his 
hostess when they were alone. 

“ Yucca. Isn’t it a horrid name? ” she commented 
frankly. “ Her father was stationed out in Arizona 
[ 23 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


when she was born, and he named her after a tree 
which grows about here. Did you think she was 
pretty? ” 

“ Why, no,” he said. “ Do you ? I thought her 
rather poetical-looking, but colourless.” 

She gave him a strange look, which he could not 
fathom. “ Oh ! you will think her beautiful if you stay 
here long enough.” She drew her low rocking-chair 
closer to the fire, and sat staring into it, her chin on 
her hand. 

They were silent, like old friends, he thinking over 
the strangeness of their meeting in such a place after 
so many years. In the adjoining room slept her two 
children — Adele’s children ! He turned his head a mo- 
ment to look at her. Life had never seemed more mys- 
terious to him than at this moment. The little gold 
thimble he had once given her, with their initials en- 
twined and the date on it, glinted on top of the sewing 
in her work-basket. And Lispenard ! How un- 
changed he was ! He did not even now quite seem her 
husband, nor the father of the boys. He had none of 
the air of a family man. He retained his old bearing 
of personal freedom, the spiritual poise of a man who, 
staff in hand, is free to start at a moment’s notice. 

The wood burned low in the old mission fireplace. 
He noticed the iron hinges to the cupboard which was 
built in at one side. Behind the small diamond-shaped 
panes of thick glass he saw dimly several rows of small 
[ 24 ] 


CHAPTER TWO 

volumes, the treasures of a bookman. He wondered 
if the two heavy brass candlesticks also came from the 
mission of Santa Ines. They had an appearance of 
great age. It was such a fireplace as this that he 
would have dreamed of for a home of his own. A 
bachelor’s home ! The thought was dreary. Above 
the mantel hung the picture of the Two Princes in the 
Tower. The blond hair of the little lads reminded 
him of Jim and Tiggy. 

He sat content in that pleasant room, steeped in 
such an atmosphere of home as he had seldom known, 
wrapped in a melancholy which was not all sadness. 

Now that the excitement of their meeting had worn 
off, she had an opportunity to observe him closely. 
Yes, he was changed. It seemed to her at times that 
her husband had not altered since their marriage. He 
was touched by immortal youth. But Trent’s dark 
hair was already sprinkled with grey, and his face had 
learned sternness. She saw that he had been success- 
ful, and knew that character had wrought for that 
success rather than brilliancy of gifts. Even his emo- 
tions came hard with him. Mingled with his tenacious 
power was a deep vein of shyness. With an eye which 
never failed to notice worldly appearance, she per- 
ceived now how well he was dressed, and she looked 
away from him, the sudden colour burning her cheeks. 
She had remembered the rusty, worn shoes drawn 
beneath her skirt. She wished he had not come, 
[ 25 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


but her warm heart repented the wish almost as soon as 
it was made, so that she turned back to him with a 
smile, the flush of mortification fading away beneath 
the gentler emotion of hospitality which succeeded her 
anger. 

“ You look like a judge, Jarvey,” she told him. 
“ Somehow, you remind me of my father.” 

“ Do I.^ ” he answered. “ Perhaps the same profes- 
sion sets its stamp on men.” He continued to regard 
her with an abstracted look, the look of a man so in- 
tent in thought upon a woman as to render him barely 
conscious of her personal nearness. 

She looked away. A dimple came and went in the 
rounded cheek nearest him. 

“ I admired your father,” he said simply. “ I stud- 
ied law in his office. That was when I met you. There 
is a steel engraving of him hanging above my desk 
now, and I have his old office furniture. I had to have 
the chair mended with steel rods.” 

Lispenard came in gaily. “ I want you to come out 
with me. It’s a wonderful night. My dear, are you 
crying ? ” 

“ No, no,” she answered, rising. She wiped away 
her tears bewitchingly, smiling at them both. “ Only 
we were speaking of my father, and it made me home- 
sick. I can’t realise he isn’t still living.” 

‘‘ She’s all unstrung over your coming,” said Lis- 
penard ; “ it’s so long since she’s seen an old friend.” 

[26 ] 


CHAPTER TWO 

“ Yes, yes ; that’s it,” she assented hastily. Not for 
worlds would she have them divine her consciousness of 
her shabby shoes. She was so nervous that she felt the 
least kindly question would draw the absurd truth 
from her. “ Jarvey, remember that we expect you to 
breakfast. I wish I might ask you to remain all night, 
but the only bed I could offer you would be the lounge 
in this room.” 

She met her husband’s glance. “ I am hurt that you 
didn’t invite me to go with you on your moonlight 
walk,” she said, pouting. 

He laughed outright, and Trent joined in. How 
well he remembered Adele’s old pretence of being of- 
fended over some mere trifle! 

She followed them out on the porch. “ Good- 
night,” she called after them ; “ good-night, 

Jarvey ! ” 

He turned to close the gate, and saw her wave her 
handkerchief, that bit of sheer linen with its faint per- 
fume which she had insisted had the very smell of the 
desert in it. Her mood was changed to coquetry, but 
the little handkerchief she waved so gaily must still 
be damp with her tears. 

“ She makes me feel like a boy again,” he said, as 
he put on his hat and fell into step with his friend. 

“ She keeps me a boy,” Lispenard answered. 


[ 27 ] 


CHAPTER III 


H e glanced at Trent as he spoke, with that ready 
smile which the other remembered so well. Un- 
like most people who smile often, this fre- 
quency of expression in him gave always the impres- 
sion of singular rarity and a kind of meaning sweet- 
ness. His light-grey cowboy’s hat shadowed his face, 
yet his features, owing to the clearness of the air, were 
distinct. 

“ You know what the painters say about us ; that 
we have no atmosphere,” he said. He called his friend’s 
attention to a pink rose which clambered about the 
doorway of the Santa Ines Mission. “ Did you ever 
know moonlight to show colour like that before.^ ” 

“ No,” answered Trent, adding abruptly : “ That 
youngest boy is you over again.” 

“ My dear fellow,” he protested, “ don’t say that. 
It robs Tiggy and me both of our individuality. They 
say a man is made over every seven years, and I’ve 
been made over five times and more. I’m in the sixth 
process now. And if so many times physically, how 
many times spiritually ? ” 

“ I’m less than a year older than you,” answered 
Trent, ‘‘ and yet you look ten years younger than I.” 
His meeting with Lispenard had stirred him deeply. 
[ 28 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 

It was the domestic life which kept men young, and he 
felt a pained conviction that should he marry now, his 
friend would still have the advantage of him in longer 
years with his children. 

His companion was silent. Trent was touched by 
the spirituality of his look. “No one deserves happi- 
ness better than you,” he said. 

“ Happiness ! ” retorted Lispenard, with delicate de- 
rision ; “ happiness is a condition like being well-fed 
and sleeping of nights. I hope I merit deeper experi- 
ence. Now, Tiggy is happy.” 

“ Where is your church? ” Trent asked. “ I’d like 
to see it.” 

They turned the corner. “ I can point it out to you 
from here,” he answered. “ It is that little building at 
the end of the street.” 

Trent was puzzled that he paused so far away. He 
wished to go nearer, to read the corner-stone, perhaps, 
seeing that the moonlight was so bright, to go inside. 

But Lispenard, after waiting courteously a moment, 
turned away indifferently. 

“ It looks small to you,” he said ; “ but it holds my 
congregation. It is really quite elaborate in its fur- 
nishings, that is, for a mission church. You didn’t 
know me when I passed through my fever of ritual- 
ism? I was lost. Ridiculous! Oh, I wish you could 
have seen me! You would have enjoyed it so! My 
performances hypnotised the women of my congrega- 
[ 29 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

tion. Even Adele bobbed and crossed and bent the 
knee ! Our religion was obscured by the tinsel of sym- 
bolism. And I assure you, Trent, it’s the one part of 
my life which fills me with keen mortification. You 
know they say we can never forgive a person who knows 
something ridiculous about us, and I have actually 
wished that some of the fools in my congregation could 
drop into their graves. Some of them still speak sen- 
timentally to me of the time when there was so much 
spirituality among us, and deplore the coldness of our 
present service. Well, what do you suppose saved me.^^ 
I must tell you. One of my most ardent supporters 
wished to put in a memorial window to her son. I drew 
the design myself and sent it East. It was a lamb, 
holding the cross. The window was to be round, and 
placed directly over the altar. After months of an- 
ticipation, it came, and was set up. The light fell 
through. I was all in a state of anticipatory beati- 
tude. The lamb was grey. Imagine my feelings! 
There I had pictured it snowy-white. As far as my 
sensations were concerned, it might have been the 
black sheep, for it was only a few shades lighter. I 
didn’t preach the sermon I had intended to that Sun- 
day. I took the golden calf of the Hebrews instead 
as my text.” 

Trent laughed. He had an absurd picture in his 
mind of his friend dressed in all the paraphernalia 
of a ritualism with which he himself had not the slight- 
[ 30 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 

est sympathy. He was a sceptic, although his mother, 
a Scotchwoman, had been a blue Presbyterian. She 
had reared him to all those tenets of morality her code 
taught, but she had done nothing to endear his church 
to him, and so, though he still abided by those prin- 
ciples of living, he was emotionally cold toward re- 
ligion. 

“The only question that really interests me in these 
matters,” he remarked, “ is whether or not I shall be 
eligible to the society of my friends after we have de- 
parted this world.” 

They walked on silently. Trent tried to imagine 
that handful of people which made up Lispenard’s con- 
gregation, drawn together by the utter loneliness of 
the desert in which they lived, and harking back to the 
primitive experiences of mankind, going through their 
religious rites as passionately as the sun-worshippers 
whose ancient civilisation had passed away long since. 

But what moonlight! The world seemed flooded 
with it. Never had he known such reaches of blue- 
silver light. 

“ I should think you might become moon-worship- 
pers,” he said. 

“ I understand that class to be confined generally in 
the asylums,” Lispenard answered. He put his arm 
affectionately through his friend’s. “ I can’t express 
the half of my joy in having you. Would you rather 
keep on walking, or do you want to go and sit down 
[ 31 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

somewhere and talk, and have something to eat ? Don’t 
tell me Mrs. Lispenard’s crackers and marmalade were 
sufficient for you. You see, I remember your appe- 
tite of old.” 

“ To be frank,” Trent confessed, “ I didn’t think 
much of the lunch-counter at the depot.” 

‘‘No one’s supposed to take his meals there,” Lis- 
penard informed him, “ except the train passengers. 
Campi’s is the place to go.” 

They turned into the main street. It was but a 
few blocks in length, and built up on one side only. 
The little town of adobe homes and low-nestling trees 
through which they had been strolling became remote 
in contrast to the palpitant gaiety of this scene. 

“It is always a mystery to me where this class 
comes from here in Sahuaro,” said Lispenard. “ Dur- 
ing the day I seem to see only the shop-keepers, some 
of my parishioners, the Indians, the Roman Catholic 
priest, but the night brings strange birds. Lord knows 
where they come from. Many are in from the mines 
to spend their earnings, and the professional gambler 
is always among us, of course. I suppose it is the in- 
fusion of Spaniards and Mexicans which intensifies 
this sense of reckless adventure in the air.” 

Music floated out from behind the screens of saloons. 
The two cowboys whom Trent had happened to notice 
when he first entered the depot stood now in a shooting- 
gallery, aiming at the leaping white rabbit and 
[ 32 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 


hounds which revolved continuously; the proprietor 
of an open cigar-stand was throwing dice with his cus- 
tomers ; through the laundry window a Chinaman was 
to be seen ironing shirts and collars. 

It seemed like the exposed street of a seaport town. 

“ I can’t help feeling that I am in a fishing-village 
on a Saturday night, and that this breeze is whipping 
in from the ocean,” said Trent. 

“ One immensity reminds us of another, but such a 
dry, sweet breeze never blew out of the ocean. It takes 
the desert to give us that.” Lispenard paused as he 
spoke. “ This is Campi’s.” 

Trent read the name painted across the large front 
window of the one-storied frame building. Within 
were displayed bottles of wine, cooked viands, fruits, 
and fresh green lettuce. The double screen door car- 
ried him back to his childhood. A tropical scene was 
painted on one half and an Icelandic view on the other. 
The room was fairly well filled as they entered and 
took seats in the least-occupied comer and ordered 
sandwiches and beer. 

Trent noticed that his companion did not touch the 
food and drank but a slight portion of the beer. The 
man was very delicate. ‘‘ Do you enjoy the life here, 
Theodore ? ” he asked him. 

“ I’m not much needed,” he answered, “ except as a 
kind of parish nurse, to marry and baptise and bury 
people. These Westerners are fine and free. They 
[ 33 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


have their own code of morality. I should do more 
good in the big cities.” 

“ Then why don’t you go there.? ” Trent cried im- 
pulsively, “ and let the world hear from you ? ” He 
leant across the table eagerly. He had thought that 
his affection for his friend had long since faded into 
mere sentiment over their diverging ways. But this 
unexpected meeting had shown the old love and con- 
geniality strong as ever. Now, as he awaited a reply 
to his appeal, he had an instant’s contemplation of the 
delightful companionship in store for them both should 
Lispenard go East. 

“ Perhaps I shall,” he answered, smiling at his 
friend’s enthusiasm. 

The answer was disingenuous. Trent drew back 
chilled. The tone was evasive, and there was an ex- 
pression in his friend’s blue eyes which he read in- 
stantly. It was the look of a man inviolably wedded 
to a secret passion. His impulse of coldness was suc- 
ceeded by pity. What poison had found its way into 
the man’s heart.? His wife and two children should 
have kept him sweet and whole. His heart yearned 
toward his friend. 

And as if he felt this softened mood toward him, 
not at all understanding the cause, Lispenard’s eyes 
grew sunny. 

“ Tell me of yourself,” he said. “ You see what my 
life is.” 


[ 34 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 

Trent opened his heart and spoke of himself as he 
had not since he last saw Lispenard. He saw that his 
friend was intensely interested, yet without curiosity. 
The man was under no temptation to sit in judgment 
on anyone. It was the quality of the ideal priest. 

“ I have had a struggle. When you married I had 
already opened an office in my own town ” 

“ I remember,” Lispenard interrupted him. “ It 
was on Main Street. I did answer that letter from 
you, didn’t I.?^ ” 

“ And after a while I found out that no lawyer 
would take a case against a fellow-lawyer. This all 
seemed professional honour to me at first, but after a 
while I caught on. They lived on the trades-people, 
and never paid their bills. Of course there were fine 
men in the profession in town, but they didn’t think it 
good taste to take up such claims. But I did. I took 
up one case after another, and the sharks either paid 
up or left town. It started me in law, but I got the 
reputation of being an ugly fellow. It hurt me. A 
man doesn’t want to be hated. Then I went into poli- 
tics. I’ve spent these fifteen years fighting.” 

“ And I in dreaming,” said Lispenard, with his first 
touch of sadness. 

“ Finally I found myself tired out, and a month ago 
I decided to take a vacation. What do you suppose 
started me.? An old phrase of yours. The Adventure 
of Life. It was like a hand beckoning me away. And 

[ 35 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

so I started out, thinking I would take my time in see- 
ing the West, and I found you and your wife again.” 

“ It was the voice of the spirit calling,” said Lispe- 
nard. ‘‘ I didn’t know how much I was missing you 
until to-night. Ah ! you must stay with us out here. 
Call it the desert if you will. It is the land of promise. 
It is in such immensities that one grows to realise the 
eternal verities. Petty distinctions, which we are apt 
to label moral, cease.” 

“ It sounds well,” Trent rejoined ; “ but should these 
distinctions you call moral, cease.? ” 

“ My dear Gulliver,” cried the other, “ have the Lil- 
liputians bound you fast with their threads of conven- 
tion .? The distinctions I speak of are to the soul what 
dress is to the body — mere frippery. Don’t you re- 
member the swimming-pool, and how we little fellows 
dived into the water, or sunned our naked bodies after- 
ward on a log.? We were twice the boys then that we 
were when scrubbed up and dressed and sent to Sun- 
day school.” 

“ You are one of the most cultivated men I ever 
knew,” his friend answered slowly, “ yet I think you 
would always have had us turn barbarians.” 

“ No, no ! ” he laughed ; “ but Greeks, my dear Jar- 
vey,” He put his hand across the table and laid it on 
the other’s arm. His face glowed. “ Don’t go back 
East. Stay with us.” 

His enthusiasm burst forth. Here in the desert 

[ 36 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 

would spring again all the glories of antiquity. The 
East did not know such soil. All that was needed was 
irrigation. Here would be represented the best phase 
of the national life, the flowering, indeed, of American 
civilisation. The finest spirit of brotherhood would be 
engendered, for no man could work alone to reclaim the 
desert, as on a New England farm. Irrigation meant 
co-operation. 

Two men, about to leave, paused and listened. Lis- 
penard addressed them. In a moment he had made his 
audience. The whole rude element of the restaurant 
gathered about his table. 

Madame Campi, the wife of the proprietor, sat at 
the desk and made change, and bestowed shrewd, 
pleased glances on Lispenard. An attraction in the 
restaurant meant custom. She was a hard, handsome 
woman, showily dressed in silk and wearing consider- 
able jewelry. Campi himself, slight, nervous, dark, 
wearing a continual smile, was the cook, and stood, 
white-capped and aproned, in the door leading to the 
kitchen, pleased that the one waiter was kept busy 
slipping in and out among his guests with the drinks. 
In the pauses between the making of change Madame 
Campi crocheted briskly. The big gilt mirror at the 
end of the room reflected the lights, the lounging men 
with their cigars and drink, Campi’s capped and timid 
figure, the stout madame with her crocheting, the 
clergyman’s delicate hand raised to emphasise a point. 
[ 37 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

The restaurant seemed twice as full as it really 
was. 

Trent was thinking that Lispenard would have made 
a success at the law. He himself was not eloquent, but 
he was relentless, sure, an opponent to be feared. He 
wrested attention by force. His companion won it 
through sheer brilliancy. 

Lispenard ended as abruptly as he had begun, and 
took up his hat and cane. “Are you ready ” he 
asked. 

He stepped through the small crowd to the desk, and 
paid for the sandwiches and beer. 

“ You are industrious, Madame Campi,” he said, 
as he took his change. 

“ So,” she said. It was the one English word she 
used most, and it took its meaning from the different 
inflections she gave to it. 

As they went out, Trent saw that his companion 
looked suddenly white and exhausted. 

“ How these people must care for you ! ” he said. 

Lispenard shook his head. “ I’m not their kind. 
They don’t approve of me. People still like the pro- 
fessional good man best, and I don’t even wear the 
clerical dress ordinarily. Those men cared nothing for 
what I said of the possibilities opening in the South- 
west. They stopped to listen because it afforded some 
diversion. If I hadn’t been a clergyman I might have 
convinced them. But, as they would express it, I was 
[ 38 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 

off my territory. If I had gone into one of these sa- 
loons and sung a hymn, I would have made a conver- 
sion and been respected. No, I’m not the man for this 
place.” 

They walked through the plaza, which was dark and 
deserted, but fragrant with the invisible welcome of 
the flowers. The long wooden platform of the depot 
was lighted by a single kerosene lamp, which had a re- 
flector and was set high in an iron bracket. They 
climbed the stairs to the balcony above and knocked at 
the upper door. 

Hay don opened it, barefoot, his trousers drawn on 
hastily over his night-shirt. 

“ This is Mr. Trent, an old friend of ours. Hay- 
don,” said Lispenard. “ I want you to see that he is 
made comfortable.” 

“ Got his room all ready,” the station-master an- 
swered. “ Reckon you was surprised to And you had 
friends here in town. Neighbour of mine said he saw 
you and Mis’ Lispenard meet. He was passing by on 
the other side of the road.” 

“ Haydon’s neighbour to every man in town,” re- 
marked Lispenard pleasantly. “ Get a good night’s 
sleep. Remember, we expect you to breakfast in the 
morning.” 

Haydon led the way through a dark hallway to a 
room at the end, and flung open the door. “ Reckon 
you’ll find everything all right. I put an extra blan- 
[ 39 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

ket at the foot of the bed, in case you’re cold, and I 
brought up your valise.” 

“ Look here ! ” cried Trent, as his host was about to 
go, “ aren’t you going to give me a light? ” 

“ I didn’t calculate to, with those moonbeans coming 
in the window as bright as day,” he answered. 

“ You’ll have to make another calculation, my 
friend,” Trent retorted good-naturedly. ‘‘ I’ve had 
enough moonlight for to-night, and if it’s not going 
to be any trouble to you, I’d just like that curtain 
down and a lamp and a newspaper. I don’t care if 
the newspaper is a week old. I want something to 
read.” 

The station-master laughed. “ Well, set down and 
try to stand the moonshine a few minutes longer. Some 
strangers seem to get into a huff with us out here the 
minute they light off the train. The desert strikes ’em 
as lonesome-like.” 

He was gone some moments, and Trent sat at the 
window staring out upon a world which seemed made 
all of black shadow and blue and silver light. 

Finally Haydon came back, pushing the door open 
with his bare foot, as his hands were full. Under one 
arm he held a newspaper and a paper-backed novel. 
He set the lamp on the bureau and put down beside it 
a small glass of port wine. 

“ It seems funny how our jokes sometimes come 
true,” he said. “ There Mis’ Lispenard and I have 
[ 40 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 

been joking for years about the friend from home we 
was to see get off the train some time, and here you’ve 
come. It ought to be my turn next to see someone 
from Georgia.” 

Have you been here long.? ” asked Trent. 

“ Been West forty years, and the last ten of ’em in 
Sahuaro,” he answered. 

“ Well,” said Trent, “ you haven’t gotten over be- 
ing a Southerner, have you.? ” 

Haydon was pleased. “ It’s my voice, I reckon. If 
I can’t do anything more for you. I’ll say good- 
night.” 

“ Hold on ! ” cried Trent. “ Don’t you want to 
drink that port yourself.? I’m much obliged, but I’ve 
just had something.” 

The station-master looked doubtful. “ I took it 
upon myself to offer it to you, seeing you was a friend 
of Mr. Lispenard’s. It don’t belong to me by rights.” 
He lifted the glass and held it so the light caught the 
ruby glow. “ Pretty, aint it.? ” He cocked his weather- 
eye at Trent and drained the glass. “ I’m giving it 
to a sick fellow I’ve got in a room here. He came 
in on the train a couple of weeks ago. The doc- 

tor sent him out for the climate. He hadn’t any 
money, and he was trying to get a job. Well, I just 
settled him in that room and told him not to worry, 
that I was going to have a little fun nursing him. I 
was in the war, sah, in the South. When he got well I 
[ 41 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

told him I’d get him a job as a cow-puncher. He was 
plucky, but weak. I held to my guns, however, and 
got him in bed. ‘ Rest is what you want,’ I says.” He 
lowered his voice confidentially. “ I more than half 
suspicion he’s got coloured blood in him. Now, I like 
to be charitable, but how do I feel, me, a Southern 
gentleman, a-nursing of a nigger 1 ” 

‘‘ I don’t blame you,” said Trent. 

Haydon surprised him by extending his hand. 
“ You’re all right. I saw you were from the North, 
but if you’d been one of them damn Yanks we some- 
times get down here, who would have told me I ought 
to be proud to nurse a nigger, and all that, you’d 
have seen damn little of me. I’m going to let on he’s 
got Mexican blood in him, if anything’s remarked. 
Matter of pride with me, so you keep mum. Mexi- 
can blood always goes in these parts, but you can’t 
fool a Southerner.” With a farewell wink he went out 
and closed the door, and Trent heard the soft fall of 
his bare feet lessen down the hall. 

He was glad of the extra blanket that night. He 
awoke shivering just before dawn, and pulled it over 
him. The moonlight was gone, and he heard a faint 
echo of the invalid’s cough. His window grew grey, 
but he could not sleep. The thought of Adele kept 
him awake. She was the kind of wife and mother his 
imagination had pictured her, and this was both bitter 
and sweet to him. He heard Haydon go down the hall 
[ 42 ] 


CHAPTER THREE 


and speak to the sick man. The incident changed the 
current of his thought, and his heart warmed with the 
consciousness of the hospitality which had been shown 
him. He had heard of it all his life, this big hospi- 
tality of the West. In the darkness he smiled as he re- 
membered that Adele’s boys were planning for his en- 
tertainment, and so, finally, he fell asleep again. 


[ 43 ] 


CHAPTER IV 


H e was awakened by a little tapping on his 
door. 

“ Who is it ? ” he called. 

“ Tiggy,” came the reply. “ Breakfast’s ’most 
ready.” 

“ All right,” he returned. “ Tell your mother not 
to wait for me. I’ll be over as soon as I’m dressed.” 

But when he came out he found Tiggy sitting on 
the hall-floor outside his door, a barefooted, hatless 
little figure. He rose and slipped his hand into 
Trent’s. “ Hurry up,” he said. “ Mamma’s made 
pop-overs, and they go down if they’re not eaten right 
away.” 

Trent could have hugged him. The child was so 
serious and charming. 

It was seven o’clock in the morning. The air 
seemed so thin, so rarefied, that he had a peculiar feel- 
ing as if there were no air for him to breathe. He 
had the same buoyancy a spring day at home im- 
parted. 

Not since his childhood had he been so conscious of 
the sunshine. It penetrated everything; the white 
sand in the roadway sparkled ; the low trees were pleas- 
[ 44 ] 


CHAPTER FOUR 

ant spots of green against the cream-coloured adobe 
walls ; the sky above was as blue as Italy. 

He hummed a favourite song and swung the hand 
of the child walking with him. 

“ I wonder if we’ll be good friends when you grow 
up,” he said, breaking off in his tune to smile down 
upon the little fellow. 

“ How funny you are,” answered Tiggy. “ Why 
don’t you be good friends with me now ? Why do you 
wait until I grow up.^ I may always be just a little 
boy. I might die.” 

“ I hope not,” Trent rejoined, too dumbfounded 
to make any other reply. He glanced down a street 
they were passing and beyond the few houses that 
straggled off into the desert. The sight struck a 
note of desolation into his mood. The consciousness 
of the desert came back, remorseless and cruel, wait- 
ing to swallow up the struggling town. Could irri- 
gation prevail against such a great force of nature? 
How could men who had ever known the green East 
and North choose this land? Tiggy dragged at his 
hand, and he perceived that the child was hanging 
back to look down the street they were about passing. 
He had his father’s sensitive frown when perplexed. 
But in a minute his face cleared and he laughed and 
waved his hand. 

“ Do you see him ? ” he asked. 

Trent was puzzled. 


[ 46 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ No,” he answered. 

“ I see him,” Tiggy answered, with another wave 
of his hand. “ Come on, we’ve got to hurry if we 
want those pop-overs good. Mamma’s tin bakes only 
eleven, and we can never divide them up even. So 
Jim and me and Papa, we each eat three, and she takes 
two.” 

She was waiting for them at the gate. ‘‘Was I 
cruel to send Tiggy to wake you up.^^ But I wanted 
you to come while everything was nice and hot. And 
then you must never miss the freshness of the early 
morning out here. It’s the pleasantest part of the 
day. Everyone takes a siesta in the afternoon.” 
She had on the gown of the night before, which now 
took on a deeper tone of lilac colour in the sunshine. 
The black lace scarf and rose were gone, and she 
wore an apron and a simple collar of white em- 
broidery. 

She led the way around the side of the house, and he 
followed, wondering. The sunshine flecked her brown 
hair with gold; she raised her hand to break off a 
spray of blue-flowering vine, and the lilac ruffle of her 
sleeve fell back to her white elbow. 

She looked back over her shoulder and smiled at 
him. “ It’s such fun to have you here, Jarvey, and 
the children are in as great a state of excitement over 
it as we. I’m taking you around to the back yard. 
We eat out of doors in the summer time.” 

[ 46 ] 


CHAPTER FOUR 

Lispenard and Jim were seated at the table, drum- 
ming on the board with their knives. 

“ Hullo ! ” cried Jim. “ We’re pretending we’re 
so hungry we can’t wait.” 

“ How do you like our breakfast-room ” asked 
Lispenard. 

“ I think it is delightful,” Trent answered heart- 
ily, looking about him. 

It was made of cacti sticks with open intervals, 
and over the sides and roof were trained vines so that 
the interior seemed filled with a cool green air. Near 
by rose the side wall of the Mission of Santa Ines. 
The adobe, once painted dark yellow, was cracked and 
broken away in places. An apricot tree with ripen- 
ing fruit was thrown in shadow against it. Rising 
above the body of the building was the tower con- 
taining the bronze bells which were still sweet- 
toned. 

The table was set and waiting. In the centre was 
the promised dish of figs, purple-black on a bed of 
green leaves. 

Mrs. Lispenard had disappeared into the kitchen, 
and they heard her voice calling Jim. He rose and 
ran into the house, Tiggy skurrying after him. They 
soon returned, Jim bearing a platter which held a 
big golden-brown omelet, his brother following with 
the prized pop-overs, their pretty mother bringing up 
the rear with the coffee-pot steaming fragrantly. 
[ 47 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ I never was so hungry in my life,” their guest 
stated. 

“ I hope the coffee’s strong enough,” said Adele, 
her cheeks very pink with excitement and pleasure. 
“ I remember you always took it so.” 

Lispenard said grace in two Latin words of bless- 
ing. “ I’m never cruel enough to say a long grace 
because there’s company,” he added, laughing. He 
was looking well. The strong light of morning 
showed him no less youthful. He had on slippers, 
and his grey study-jacket, like a book-cover shabby 
through much use, had an added dignity and mean- 
ing because of this worn look. “ I’ve been up work- 
ing for a couple of hours,” he said. “ I seem to need 
no more sleep than I ever did.” 

Trent felt the holiday spirit of the occasion, 
and he was touched, even embarrassed, in his instinc- 
tive modesty, to think he was the inspiration 
of it. 

After breakfast the two men strolled over to ex- 
plore the old mission. Trent found it to be no less 
interesting than the conversation of the previous 
evening had led him to expect. There were the dim 
frescoes of the evangelists and angels, the quaint 
painting of the Lord blowing down the breath of life, 
the broken green balconies, the sunken main altar. 
The floors had long since almost disappeared, and 
showed in uneven patches above drifted sand. Lis- 
[ 48 ] 


CHAPTER FOUR 

penard climbed up into the tiny tower and rang the 
bronze bells, startling a flock of white doves that 
nested in the turret. 

Trent, listening below in the half-dusk, experienced 
an emotion more akin to pure religion than he had 
known for years. The sweet tones seemed to fill his 
ears with echoings of the past. He felt that they 
sounded from an ancient frontier civilisation, and he 
was filled with reverence for the early mission fathers 
who had brought those bells such distances into the 
interior. 

When they returned to the house they found Mrs. 
Lispenard alone. 

“ I told Jim he might have a holiday, Theodore,” 
she said, glancing up from her sewing. “ He was 
much disappointed that I wouldn’t consent to a pic- 
nic in your honour to-day,” she added, addressing 
Trent. “ I thought you would enjoy it more after a 
day or two, when you are rested.” 

“ I’m not tired,” he said. “ I should enjoy any- 
thing. Where does he go to school ? ” 

“ He has been through the school here, which has 
only the primary courses as yet, so Theodore teaches 
both him and Tiggy,” she answered. 

“ I suppose you will soon be sending them East to 
a preparatory school,” Trent remarked. 

“ I should like to,” she said, with a touch of bitter- 
ness, “ but we have no money. I tell Theodore that 
[ 49 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


Jim will make a splendid cow-puncher and Tiggy 
might become an assistant to him in the ministry. The 
bishop is a good old man and would give him his de- 
gree easily. I’m sure he’d make allowances for his 
not being very strong.” 

Lispenard smiled. “ I’m determined not to be hurt 
by the sting of poverty. I refuse to let outside cir- 
cumstances humiliate me. ‘ Dost thou laugh to see 
how fools are vexed, To add to golden numbers, 
golden numbers ? ’ W ait until I get on my shoes and 
change my coat. I want to take you for a walk be- 
fore it gets any warmer out.” 

While he was gone in his bedroom Mrs. Lispenard 
sewed nervously, not looking up at her guest. Her 
happier mood was gone. 

“ You ought to be proud of your boys,” he said 
gently. “ They are fine little fellows.” A vague plan 
was forming in his mind. Perhaps he might be al- 
lowed to help toward their education. The sons of 
such a scholar as Lispenard, and the grandsons of such 
an able man as her father had been, were born to the 
training of a university. 

“ Are you ready ? ” asked Lispenard, reappearing. 

She smiled a good-bye to Trent, but she did not 
look at her husband. He followed his guest out, his 
colour heightened. Halfway to the gate he excused 
himself and went back into the house and kissed hej: 
good-bye. She was crying. 

[ 50 ] 


CHAPTER FOUR 


“ I am sorry I said that about being poor,” she 
told him. 

He kissed her again. “ I wish you were as rich in 
me as I in you,” he answered, and she put her arm 
about his neck, telling him she had not meant it, desir- 
<. ous above all things not to spoil his walk, but to send 
him off happy with his friend. 

But when he had finally gone she locked the door 
against any disturbance and lay down on the lounge 
and wept bitterly. At last she stopped from sheer 
weariness. She had a mental vision of her husband as 
he must be at that moment, walking beside his friend, 
looking younger than he should for his age; slight, 
blue-eyed, visionary, talking, talking, talking. She 
wrung her hands nervously. Would he never stop? 

What had he ever done for her, for his children? 
Was a husband’s, a father’s duty merely a negative 
one, merely that he should not be unkind? It was 
Jarvis Trent who had thought the boys ought to be 
sent away to school. She sat staring into the past, 
trying to reconstruct it and to see the possibilities of 
the present had she married Trent. She had broken 
her engagement with him to marry Lispenard. But 
she could not Imagine her life now without her chil- 
dren, whose individuality was as strong as her own. 
Perhaps . she had been wrong. She had not shown the 
sympathy with this last book which she had accorded 
his earlier writings. Her woman’s pride demanded 
[ 51 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


her husband’s worldly success. Whatever their in- 
tellectual worth might be, those unpublished manu- 
scripts were only pitiful to her. Even more, she was 
humiliated by them. She would read for herself the 
chapter which he had been discussing with Yucca 
Armes the night before. She sat down at his desk and 
took it out from the drawer, and read it carefully 
word for word, her eyes aching with the tears she had 
shed. She did not pause until she had finished the 
chapter. Her heart was not softened. She laid 
her hands on the manuscript and looked at them, 
the hands of a gentlewoman roughened by hard 
work. 

She turned back the leaves to the first page and 
read it over again. There had been a sentence echo- 
ing in her mind for months. At times she had even 
feared her unconscious lips would frame it while she 
slept and her husband would guess her condemnation 
of him. 

But now she said the words aloud, distinctly, in the 
room in which she was thankful to sit alone. 

“ ‘ The voice of one crying in the wilderness.’ ’’ 

The very utterance was a relief after the long strain 
of repression. She repeated the words again deliber- 
atel}^, her eyes on the manuscript. 

“ ‘ The voice of one crying in the wilderness.’ ” 

Where had it led her, that voice she had followed in 
her careless girlhood? 


[ 52 ] 


CHAPTER FOUR 

To the wilderness — to the desert ! 

The voice of love — a siren voice. Her thoughts 
were bitter. She did not wish to look at her husband 
when his friend was by, so poorly did his youthful 
appearance contrast with Trent’s maturity. She 
covered her eyes with her hands. Her old lover had 
been faithful to her memory. Her instinct told her 
that. Her inner self held aloof from Theodore; it 
even struggled to free itself from the clinging love of 
her children, and to revert to her youthful dreams of 
happiness. 

She heard Tiggy try the front door and, when he 
could not get in, go around to the back. He came in 
through the kitchen, calling her all the way, a habit 
carried over from his babyhood. 

“ I’m here, dear,” she answered. 

He was frightened when he perceived that she had 
been crying. She took him up in her lap. 

“ Have you been reading a sad story. Mamma ” 
he asked, with the sensitive frown which was like his 
father’s. He knew what it was to cry hard even 
over fairy stories, which everyone knew were not 
true. 

She nodded. 

“ You oughtn’t to read sad stories,” said Tiggy. 
Suddenly he burst into tears. “You oughtn’t to,” 
he insisted. The sight of his mother crying was too 
much for him. 


[ 63 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

She had never had sweeter consolation. In com- 
forting him she forgot her own grief. The trend of 
her nature was toward happiness. In the reaction 
which followed her mood of bitterness she became more 
joyous than she had been for days. 


CHAPTER V 


T he two men strolled down to the barber-shop, 
the framework of which was painted in diag- 
onal stripes of red, white, and blue. There 
Lispenard read the daily Sahuaro Courant while his 
guest was being shaved. 

“ I cannot express the great admiration a sheet 
of this kind rouses in me,” he remarked when Trent 
was ready to go ; “ it always seems to me peculiarly 
American and follows the flag. The smallest of our 
towns has a paper, if it’s only a weekly.” 

“ I’ll never forget the poem you wrote when we 
were youngsters and the teacher had it put in the 
Southbury Sentinel” cried Trent with an almost con- 
vulsive chuckle of amusement ; “ ^And the air was all 
darkened with vampires. That swam in the shuddering 
breeze.’ ” 

“ I remember,” he answered. “ I should be tempted 
to thrash Jim if I found him putting on any such 
airs. A child with literary ability invariably offends 
me. In fact, I am beginning to perceive a mortifying 
resemblance to my former self in Tiggy.” 

The little clean, sparkling street looked as if newly 
washed in that wonderful air. In the morning light 
it was soberly industrious. The feverish excitement, 
[ 55 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


the recklessness of the evening before, was gone. 
The shooting-gallery and saloons were still open, but 
were as yet unfrequented, and those shops which had 
been dark intervals at night, serving only to mark 
the spaces between the lighted places of amusement, 
now showed an open and attractive face, like virtue 
waking in the morning. Suits were hung in front of 
the ready-made clothing store and a glass case of 
jewelry was rolled out by the Jewish proprietor. The 
druggist who rented part of his shop for the post- 
office stood in his doorway talking with his neighbor 
who dealt in groceries, chiefly of the canned variety. 
In the street was the lazy oxwain of the ranchman, 
and a mounted Mexican went by towing a young bull, 
which kept ducking its head in a vain resistance. The 
gaiety of the night still held over, fresher and more 
charming because of the morning air; the spirit of 
adventure still stirred the pulses, and the mountains 
beckoned. 

“ I never was in such a cheerful place in my life,” 
Trent said enthusiastically. 

They turned into the tobacco shop, which was built 
open on the street and closed at night by a lattice- 
work of iron. From there they crossed the railroad 
track and struck out for the Indian village, which was 
about a quarter of a mile away. It lay low and level, 
an irregular, brownish square of adobe huts in the 
natural mud-colour. As they drew near they passed 
[ 56 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 

the small farms where rude attempts at irrigation had 
been made, and they saw an Indian following a plough 
and ox. Beyond were the blue castellated mountains. 
The scene, in its primitive simplicity, was Biblical. 

But it was not until they had gone beyond the 
confines of the village that Trent saw the open desert 
in the unbroken sweep of its wide desolation. It was 
a world such as he had not dreamed of. It was re- 
mote, and indescribably solitary. In the moonlight 
this solitude had seemed mysterious. Now there was 
no mystery beneath the blazing sun, and the earth lay 
naked and unconcealed. Lizards and horned toads 
panted on the burning white sands, and jack-rabbits 
skurried away at their approach. Birds with droop- 
ing wings guarded their young from the mid-day heat, 
for often the low growth in which they nested was too 
sparse to give sufficient shade. It was a land of fading 
blue and grey, of infinite distances. About them the 
grey breast of the desert became warmer-hued as they 
walked through an arroyo of yellow sand, or showed 
silvery green where the grease-wood spread it- 
self, fighting for life against the burning heat 
and drought. But, however the brown breast 
softened to their approach, always that sense of 
merging distance intensified until the mountains 
no longer dominated the scene, but became gi- 
gantic waves of the desolate whole, and this 
effect of water was increased by the wavering vibra- 
[ 57 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


tions of heat over the sands. They passed strange 
cactus growths, and the wind was ever lifting the 
sand in miniature whirls. 

‘‘ Dust-devils,” said Lispenard, noting them. 

It dawned upon Trent that he and his companion 
had not spoken for a long while, and he glanced at 
him, surprising in him the same look he had seen in 
his eyes the night before — the blue, visionary look of 
a man inviolably wedded to a secret passion. 

“ How do you stand it, Lispenard.^ ” he asked ab- 
ruptly. “ It’s desolation itself. There’s nothing 
green, there’s no colour to’ relieve the eye in this dead 
level of monotony.” 

“ My dear fellow,” protested his friend, ‘‘ do you 
know what it is called.?^ The painted desert. It drips 
with colour, as an artist would express it.” 

“ You’re wrong,” retorted Trent jovially. 
‘‘ ‘ Drips ’ implies moisture, and there’s none here, 
except in that bottle you brought out with you. Give 
me a sip of it.” 

He uncorked the bottle and put it to his lips. The 
water was warm and flat. “ I never tasted any- 
thing so delicious,” he said, passing it back. He was 
conscious of no fatigue; his buoyancy even increased 
with the heat. He swung his cane at a huge cactus 
thirty feet high, having small purple blossoms and 
fluted like a Greek column ; he paused to wonder at the 
graceful palo-verde, whose willow-like stems and 
[ 58 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 


branches were bright green, but having no leaves 
to give shade; he made a feint at a jack-rabbit; 
he raised his voice and shouted. This unfettered 
raising of his big voice filled him with childlike 
delight. He put his arm about his companion’s 
shoulders. “ Why, Lispenard,” he said, “ I haven’t 
shouted like that since we fellows used to go to 
the swimming-pool. Don’t you remember how we 
youngsters used to yell and holler at the echo-rock, 
and what a thrill it always gave us to hear the echo of 
our own voice coming back at us.^ You talk of beauty 
here. Man, you’re enchanted ! Think of the greenness 
there, and the rippling water, and that old rock cov- 
ered with moss ! I shall think you’re hipped if you 
talk about beauty in this great waste.” 

“ It is here, though, that you learn to love nature ; 
here at the sources,” Lispenard answered. 

“Do you know how I feel.^ ” cried Trent, like a 
boy. “ I feel as if I were soaking in sunshine, and yet 
I’m not uncomfortably hot.” 

The mountains toward w^hich their steps tended 
seemed further away and more elusive than ever, but 
he no longer cared. He was willing to walk on indefi- 
nitely. But suddenly the rocky heights which had 
seemed so far rose almost in front of them. 

“ The nearness of an object can be as deceptive as 
though it were remote. The air is always weaving 
illusions,” Lispenard commented. “ Those mountains 
[ 59 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


are the sirens of the desert. Many a man loses his life 
searching for fabled mines the Spaniards tell of.” 

They began to climb the nearest mountain, follow- 
ing a trail which was many centuries old. Halfway 
up, they heard voices, and surprised Miss Armes and 
Jim spreading out their lunch in the shadow of a big 
boulder. 

“ I knew I heard someone coming up,” she cried. 
She was laying a napkin on the rocky floor, and at her 
side was a basket. Her hat was tossed aside; her 
shining hair was knotted low in the nape of her neck, 
and through the belt of her linen blouse she had drawn 
a spray of yellow-green blossoms. The warmth of 
noon seemed infused into her personality, and her eyes, 
which he had thought shadowed and sad the night be- 
fore, now looked up at him with frank friendliness. 

“We didn’t bring lunch enough for all,” said Jim 
sulkily. It didn’t seem to him fair that after his pro- 
posed picnic to them all had been refused they should 
swoop down upon him now, when the food supply was 
limited. 

“ Well, the Lord may send down manna to us, then, 
you unnatural son,” answered his father. “ Jarvey, 
you and I will sit down with our bottle of water, and 
watch them while they feast.” 

Trent laughed. He was rather pleased than other- 
wise by the boy’s sturdy disapproval. It was honest, 
if not hospitable. 


[ 60 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 

I asked everyone to come, but you all refused,’^ 
Jim continued, as he watched Miss Armes pile up the 
sandwiches. “ I guess there’s enough, though. I’ve 
counted three apiece all around, and one left over.” 

“ I should suggest to you to take that thirteenth 
one, then,” said his father, “ only it’s an unlucky num- 
ber. I can’t advise you to eat it, much as I’d like to 
see you enjoy it.” 

“We thought we would go up to the old fort after 
lunch,” said Miss Armes. “ Is that where you are go- 
ing? ” 

“ No,” he answered; “ we had no definite plan, so 
we will accept yours and tag along after, if my son 
will permit.” He was in his most charming humour, 
more youthful than ever in his grey suit, retaining a 
boyish habit of tossing his head when talking, that he 
might throw back the lock of straight blond hair 
which fell persistently over his forehead. Time seemed 
to have passed him by, save for those subtleties of ex- 
pression which come with maturity of thought. 

Trent missed Mrs. Lispenard and Tiggy. After a 
while it dawned upon him that he was, perhaps, the 
only person in the little party who did. 

The mountain encircled them; the porphyry rock 
rose like great walls, here and there streaked red, again 
covered with the yellowish stain of a hardy lichen. 
Behind them was a cave, where the water collected in 
the early spring. The creeping wind stirred the sand 
[ 61 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


heaped on its floor, and showed the white skeleton of a 
rabbit. “ Some wolf lives here, I guess,” Jim re- 
marked, noting other bones. Above, the sky was tur- 
quoise. A condor sighted the little group, and swept 
toward them on a long incline, then verged away at a 
shout from the boy. 

They watched it circling away on seemingly motion- 
less wings until it became a black speck in the blue. 

“ I’d like to have killed it,” said Jim savagely. 

Miss Armes was looking up, and as Trent noticed 
her lifted profile against the boulder back of her he 
understood why Mrs. Lispenard had told him he would 
grow to think her beautiful. The outline of her fea- 
tures was perfect. But he felt that it was not a beauty 
to stir a man’s pulses. It was too remote, too classical. 
She was a woman to waken wistful longings that 
touched on dreams. He felt this to be so, although 
she would never attract him personally. Moved by a 
sudden thought, he glanced at his friend. Lispenard’s 
eyes were fixed on the girl’s face with an expression 
which baffled him. It might have been only the con- 
tent any beautiful thing inspires, or a deeper and more 
personal emotion. But, whichever it was, the pecul- 
iarity to Trent was the happiness of the look. 

She turned to them both with a smile. “ I can’t 
help believing in the existence of spiritual evil when 
such a hideous thing as that bird can live in the phys- 
ical world.” 


[ 62 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 

‘‘ There was a time when I argued finely that every- 
thing had beauty which expressed perfectly its own 
peculiar character,” remarked Lispenard, selecting a 
mellow apricot from the depths of the lunch-basket. 
“ I was a mush of religious emotion at the time, and I 
was determined to see beauty in everything which had 
fitness. I’ve quite changed.” 

“ I believe in positive sin as opposed to positive vir- 
tue,” Trent joined in. “ No one can deal with crim- 
inals as I have had occasion to, and not come to some 
such conclusion. Still, I never saw but a few whom I 
felt were hopelessly bad. It wasn’t heredity nor acci- 
dent. It was actual sinfulness.” His face became stem. 
“ I think that I was intellectually just in such cases, 
and looked only at the particular offence for which the 
prisoner was committed, but the temptation was to 
crush him to the fullest limit of the law. It was the 
same spirit which made me stone snakes when a boy.” 

“ Don’t ! ” said Lispenard. “ I’m nerveless when it 
comes to killing. I get weak.” 

‘‘ Yet you were always enthusiastic over war,” an- 
swered Trent. ‘‘ I can remember that when you were 
a boy you used to pore over maps of battles. At one 
time you even thought of entering the army.” 

“ I know it,” he said. “ That was because I scented 
glory in the smoke of war.” 

“ I’d like to go to war,” said Jim. This was the 
kind of conversation he enjoyed. As a rule the so- 
[ 63 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


ciety of older people was intolerably dull to him. The 
fact that Miss Armes’ father had been killed in an In- 
dian outbreak was an element in his admiration for 
her. 

Don’t think I’ve no backbone, J arvey,” Lispenard 
continued. “ You’re the born judge, but it isn’t in 
me. I feel the other man’s position too keenly. That’s 
why I can’t buttonhole a reprobate and inquire into 
the state of his soul, and condemn him if he doesn’t 
mend his way.” 

That’s all self-indulgence on your part,” his 
friend retorted. “ Do your duty, and cut off their 
heads, even if it gives you a qualm, when they don’t 
come up to time. Theodore, you’re the kind of man 
who’d rather let a man kill you than kill him.” 

Lispenard admitted this, with some amusement. 
“ Unless the instinct of self-preservation rose superior 
to my real desire.” 

“ And I’d be so sure the right was on my side that 
I’d prefer to do the killing,” said Trent. 

“ You can just bet I would, too ! ” cried Jim, help- 
ing himself to the thirteenth sandwich. His appetite 
prevailed against his discretion. Cozzens had taught 
him respect for superstitions, arguing that if man- 
kind had held to them so many years there must be 
some truth in them. 

He felt more intimately acquainted with the big 
mine-owner than with his father, who puzzled him. 
[ 64 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 

‘‘ I’d put my money on you, though, in a fight,” he 
added loyally. 

“ Thank you,” said Lispenard. “ I shall try to 
wear my blushing honours modestly. May your 
father prove to you, Jim, that he is a man of muscle.” 

While they were talking Miss Armes had but half 
listened. She sat sideways, resting on one arm, her 
hand spread flat on the rock. A small indigo lizard 
was playing over her fingers. 

“ It feels the warmth,” she said. I never saw one 
quite as deeply blue. It must take its purple colour 
from the shadow of the mountain above us.” As her 
eyes met those of Trent he had to reconstruct the 
mental impression he had already formed of them: 
they were the colour of the lizard creeping over her 
white hand. 

“ If we’re ever going to go,” said Jim impatiently, 
“ we ought to be going. We’ve been hanging around 
here more than an hour doing nothing.” 

“ You seem to have finished eating only just now,” 
his father suggested. 

“ That’s so,” said the boy, somewhat abashed. 

“ Ah, Nature ! How ungrateful thy children are ! ” 
Lispenard cried. “No sooner are we fed than we 
forget we were hungry. It is significant that we 
never say grace after a meal.” 

“ What I like about a picnic is that you never have 
to hear grace said,” Jim asserted. 

[ 65 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ And this from a clergyman’s son ! ” laughed 
Trent. 

Miss Armes drew away her fingers with soft reluc- 
tance, and the little creature, frightened, slipped into 
a crevice of the rock. “ I should like a sapphire neck- 
lace just that colour,” she said. 

Trent smiled. It was the first feminine thing he had 
heard her say. 

“What is it?” she asked, perceiving his amuse- 
ment. “ Wouldn’t you like a sapphire necklace? ” 

“ Not on myself,” he answered, laughing. He did 
not wonder that Lispenard thought her beautiful. 

She repacked the basket, and Lispenard took it. 
“ I suppose I ought to make Jim carry it, but a boy 
is so much more burdened by such a thing than an 
older person. Look ! There is that lizard again, out 
on that bit of rock. It has lost its colour.” 

Trent had to look sharply before he could see it. 
Then he saw its tiny bright eyes, whose glitter seemed 
almost evil. Its skin was mottled, dull, and wrinkled. 
He wondered, with sudden repulsion, how she could 
have let it play over her fingers. 

The afternoon became almost unending to him. He 
was more depressed by Adele’s absence than inspired 
by the company. His loyalty to her made him resent- 
ful of their unconcern. He felt that she should have 
been with them instead of this girl, and he experi- 
enced a deepening disapproval of the situation, a dis- 
[ 66 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 

approval which centred finally on Miss Armes. He 
had known many women, none intimately, but all suf- 
ficiently well to have been impressed with their general 
conventional delicacy. It seemed to him that she 
lacked in that modest propriety which was to be ex- 
pected in a woman of her class. She should not be 
willing to remain the greater part of the day on a 
mountain-top in the company of a boy, a young mar- 
ried man who did not conceal his evident attraction 
toward her, and a third person who was almost a 
stranger. He corrected his first judgment. After all, 
it was they who had followed her, and it was not to be 
expected that she should give up her plans for the 
mere accident of their arrival. But her beauty faded 
in the light of his keen observation, until he felt that 
those moments when in the shadow of the rock she had 
appeared so to him had been a delusion, like the colour 
of the lizard. The dislike he had taken the evening be- 
fore bridged across that impulse of liking, and filled 
him with distrust. He remembered how he had en- 
countered the watchful regard of her pale, oval face 
beyond the glow of the lamp. He distrusted a watch- 
ful person. It was a maxim with him that a disingen- 
uous man was unsuspicious. 

He saw that she felt the growing change in him, 
and several times he met her gaze, no longer watchful, 
but timid, the gaze of an indulged woman who 
wonders at any man’s disapproval of her. 

[ 67 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


They wandered about the rocky floor, which they 
reached after a long climb. It had once been an Aztec 
fort, and was one of the last records to mark the end 
of a civilisation long dead. Lispenard pointed out 
the ancient trail going on still further; the loosened 
boulders which must once have marked a wall; some 
half-obliterated drawings on the solid rock, of lizards 
and snakes and birds. Trent was dizzy in that rare- 
fied air. The snow on distant mountain-peaks, shin- 
ing in the sun against the blue, dazzled him ; but his 
friend’s eyes were as bright and alert as those of an 
eagle. He was glad when they both sat down near 
the crumbling, ancient wall, and lit their cigars. 

“ I must admit that too much of anything like this 
makes me melancholy,” he said. “ It is too far re- 
moved from the life of to-day to be cheerful.” 

“ I think the remote past is always cheerful and in- 
spiring,” said Lispenard. “ It is the near past that is 
depressing. What could seem farther away and sad- 
der than the youth of our parents.? We feel that we 
never could go far enough back to touch their lives 
then. I remember I used to feel that keenly as a 
child.” 

They puffed contentedly at their cigars. In the se- 
rene present the remote past of which he spoke seemed 
of no more value than that past which was nearer. 
They looked at each other and laughed, like two boys, 
and Trent blew smoke-rings of a perfection which 
[ 68 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 

had made him famous in his undergraduate days. 
Miss Armes and Jim had followed the trail farther 
up the mountain, and they were alone. 

“ Can’t you imagine how an eagle must feel.? ” Lis- 
penard asked. Haven’t you seen the eagle type in 
people.? It is always a fine type. Major Armes was 
that kind of man, fierce and grey as an old eagle, and 
a born fighter. It would have broken his heart to die 
in his bed. I think his daughter knew this, for she 
never took the death of her father as tragically as 
might have been expected. He died in that awful mas- 
sacre some years back, you remember. He was primi- 
tive, with all his worldliness, primitive as an In- 
dian.” 

“ I think it always takes primitive people to name 
their children after trees or States or famous gener- 
als,” Trent commented, flicking the ash from his ci- 
gar. “ I have a client, a woman, whose father named 
her Stonewall Jackson; and don’t you remember old 
man Stickney, in our town, who named his sons One, 
Two, and Three Stickney.? Mrs. Lispenard was tell- 
ing me last night that Yucca was the name of some 
tree out here.” 

His companion nodded. “ I have in mind a poem,” 
he said, turning his bright eyes upon his friend. 
“ The subject is the eagle. I have the conception, but 
I can’t rise to it in expression. Well, it is better to 
fall short of my best than to content myself with an 
[ 69 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

exploitation of mere cleverness which might bring in 
money and cheap notoriety, like a merely popular 
novel, and even rhyming. And there is nothing more 
injurious to a man’s development than hack-work. It 
takes the bloom from his genius. And sometimes I 
have thought genius is just that delicate bloom so 
easily gone. You understand.? ” 

His friend made no reply. Lispenard, present, de- 
prived him of the power to make those practical sug- 
gestions which he knew would come to him when away. 
The man had the gift of making Trent’s own solid 
world dissolve, becoming unsubstantial, forming itself 
into evanescent beauty through whose divine expan- 
sion riches and worldly success, weighted by their own 
grossness, sank. He wondered now if even Adele al- 
ways understood her own husband — if there were not 
moments when she must feel strangely baffled. 

Miss Armes and Jim were returning. They heard 
their voices before they appeared. 

“ I have often wondered why it is that there should 
be so many perfect flowers, although the botanists tell 
us not, I believe, — stupid, meddling fellows, — and so 
seldom a beautiful face. I suppose it is because our 
souls make our bodies,” said Lispenard. 

“ You argue ill for those of us who are not hand- 
some,” he answered shortly. “ I have known some hid- 
eous saints.” 

“ How unpleasant ! ” Lispenard exclaimed. “ Here 

[ 70 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 

they come. We heard your voices before you ap- 
peared. What mystery there is in a hidden voice ! It 
is a subject for romance. Did anyone ever fall in love 
with his own echo, as Narcissus did with his face.? I 
don’t suppose a great singer really hears his own voice 
as we do. I am going to bequeath to Tiggy a book 
which shall contain the titles of the books his father 
had in mind to write. What did you find up there ? ” 

“ Nothing,” said Jim, disgusted. “ It just ended 
halfway up to the top. Let’s go home now. Cozzens 
is coming back to-day. Come on. I’m first down.” 

“We did find this, however, and I thought the trail 
might commence again farther up, but we were get- 
ting tired,” said Miss Armes. She extended her palm 
to show Lispenard a flint arrow-head. It was not her 
voice nor her expression which betrayed her to Trent. 
It was an almost ineffable gentleness of manner, as dif- 
ficult to define as if a flower should give its fragrance. 
A pain ran through his heart, for the incident re- 
minded him of that time when he had seen another 
woman maintain the same attitude toward his friend, 
and his own happiness had gone out. He did not 
blame Lispenard, nor was he resentful, although he 
had wondered that a man who had so little of the 
physical about him should be so irresistible to women. 
But, knowing his friend as he did, he had grown to 
think that it spoke well for the innocence and sweet- 
ness of women that this should be so. It was the re- 
[ 71 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


gard women were always eager to bestow upon a spir- 
itual leader, just as men were apt to be more aggres- 
sive and to question such a right in another man. 

“ Look at Jim ! ” cried Lispenard, as they started 
down. “ He’ll beat us. Every healthy boy is always 
anxious to win out, even if he is obliged to delude 
himself into an imagined race.” He took the lead. 
“ Look out for loose boulders ! ” he shouted back. 

His warning came a second too late. Miss Armes 
slipped, and would have fallen had not Trent caught 
her arm. 

“ How awkward of me ! ” she cried. I don’t know 
when I ever slipped before. I think it was an uncon- 
scious acting on suggestion.” She glanced up at him, 
laughing. He held her arm as though she were a cul- 
prit. His face was stern. He was thinking of Adele, 
and that he missed her. 

A blush succeeded her amazement at his manner. 
She withdrew her arm and stepped ahead of him, that 
she might walk alone, nor did she once look back at 
him the rest of the way down. It was not until they 
reached the bottom, where the triumphant Jim awaited 
them, that he met her look again, and then he was 
stirred out of his abstraction. Any timid wonder at his 
disapproval was gone. He had a swift conviction 
that her father’s blood spoke in that look. But her 
expression changed instantly to its accustomed gentle- 
ness, and she made some courteous, indifferent speech 
[ 72 ] 


CHAPTER FIVE 


about it being later than they had realised. It was as 
though his lapse were too unimportant to disturb her 
good breeding. 

However courteous and hospitable she might be to 
him in the future, it would be for the sake of his 
friends, not for his own. He knew instinctively that 
she disliked him, knew it as he did when he decided in 
court against a woman. She was like her sex, resent- 
ing as presumptuous any judgment of them from a 
man. 

It was nearing sunset as they started home across 
the desert. The world was becoming fairyland. 
Crepe-like veils of pink and blue and violet were be- 
ing woven in the air. The mountains, so dull, so mo- 
notonous to their approach, were beginning to take on 
great splashes of purple. Deep clefts appeared, and 
the tops rose magnificently. 

Wistful, bewildered thoughts disturbed him, the 
thoughts almost of youth: “ those beautiful days when 
I was so unhappy ! ” He remembered with a half-smile 
the words of the famous Frenchwoman. He could 
hear the steady conversation of Miss Armes and his 
friend. Brilliant as he knew it to be, he preferred the 
sturdy silence of Jim, tramping along at his side. 
The day had started happily. He felt desperately 
lonely. He could think of no one save Adele, and this 
with deep longing, as though she were once more the 
sweetheart of his youth. This one day had seemed 
[ 73 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


longer away from her than the fifteen years that had 
become so short since their meeting. 

They neared the little town, mellow and brown in 
the level rays of the sun. It already had a homelike 
look to him. He could see the red tiled roofs, the sug- 
gestion of green the trees gave, the small spirals of 
smoke from many hearths. There Adele awaited their 
return. 


[ 74 ] 


CHAPTER VI 


H e did not return with Lispenard to supper. 
“ I may stay some time, and I am not going to 
become a burden on your wife,” he told him. 
‘‘You will see me later in the evening. I have made 
arrangements for my meals at Campi’s.” 

The long desert twilight had passed into the moonlit 
night when he finally arrived to find them waiting for 
him on the porch of the little home nestling in the 
shadow of the old mission. 

“ The boys left good-night for you,” Adele said. 
“ I was cruel enough to make them go to bed before 
you came. It is nearly nine o’clock. Jim was so tired 
he went right to sleep.” 

Lispenard laughed. “ Sit down, Jarvey,” he said. 
He continued to puff at his pipe, his eyes bright with 
amusement. Several nights before, he thought, he 
had seen Jim hurrying home from Hay don’s after ten 
o’clock. He said nothing of this the next morning. 
He had done the same thing himself when young. 

“ Isn’t that a picture for you, Trent ” he asked. 
The silver light had struck the roof and bell-turret 
of Santa Ines. The pale, phosphorescent outline was 
indescribably beautiful, and as they watched it a 
[ 76 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

belated dove fluttered home to its nest in the old mis- 
sion. 

“ Shan’t we go over to see Miss Armes.? ” Adele 
asked. Supper had been so late that she had missed 
the excitement of going for the mail, and she was rest- 
less because of the long day at home. 

“ Does she live far? ” her guest asked reluctantly. 
“ I think it is delightful here.” 

“ I know it, but it will soon be too cold to sit out 
longer,” she answered. “ She lives about a block down 
the street. I want you to see her home, too. It is said 
to be the handsomest adobe house in the State. It is 
built in the old Spanish style and has an inner court. 
Her father died after it was completed. He never en- 
joyed it much, poor man ! ” 

“ Does she live alone ? ” he asked. 

“ She has an aunt who sometimes visits her in the 
winter, and they have always kept an old Mexican 
housekeeper, a disagreeable, miserly creature, al- 
though they say she comes of a fine old family, and I 
must admit she is really devoted to Yucca. Then, too, 
she makes a pet of Tiggy, and bakes him sweet 
cakes.” 

“ She seems young to live alone like that,” was his 
comment. 

“ Oh, she’s not so young ! ” she retorted impatiently. 
Then she dimpled and laughed. “ Am I not horrid, 
Jarvey? But then I get so provoked with her to live 

[T'6] 


CHAPTER SIX 

alone like that when she could travel. You know she’s 
rich. I actually believe she loves the desert ! Let us 
go,” she added, rising. “ Don’t you feel the chill be- 
ginning to creep into the air ! ” 

“ There isn’t any chill at all,” her husband pro- 
tested, “ but she’ll never admit anything is right out 
here in the desert.” 

“ Then why did you bring me to it ? ” she cried tri- 
umphantly, as though her question were the only ar- 
gument possible. She put her arm affectionately 
about his shoulder. Deep in her heart she was repent- 
ant of her bitter mood toward him earlier in the day. 
“ Aren’t you coming, dear ? ” 

“ Adele is the only person who ever makes me feel 
cross,” he said humourously. He kept hold of her 
hand. “ Did the moon ever shine more radiantly than 
it does now on Santa Ines.?^ Trent, when you marry 
be sure that you and your wife agree in taste, and it 
won’t seriously matter if your ideas of morality 
differ.” 

“ Good morality is only another expression of good 
taste,” she said. 

“ Oh ! ” he groaned, ‘‘ did you ever hear such hope- 
less shallowness? Come, let us go before you mortify 
me further. Yes, I’ve locked the door. Don’t ask me 
to go and try it again. I won’t.” 

“ You see, Jarvey,” coaxingly, “ Theodore doesn’t 
appreciate my anxiety about the children.” 

[ 77 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ She’s afraid someone may steal Jim,” Lispenard 
said, with a chuckle, as his friend went up obediently 
and proved the door to be locked. 

The three walked abreast down the quiet street, and 
turned in at the rose-arbour which led from Miss 
Armes’s gate to the front door. 

“ How we love the elusive,” Lispenard cried, 
throwing back his head. “ I see the moon glancing 
through the leaves, and I am filled with witchery.” 

His wife, half pausing to follow the example his 
words suggested, was suddenly conscious of Trejit’s 
nearness in the close arbour. The little while he had 
been seated next to her on their steps that evening had 
enveloped her in an atmosphere of tenderness, a 
going-out, as it were, of his whole being to her for 
sympathy. She had met his wistful eyes in the moon- 
light. The subtle femininity of her own nature rec- 
ognised the change the day had wrought in him, and 
wondered. The scent of the roses was sweet ; she saw 
the moon through the leaves ; the witchery of girlhood 
blew like a breath across her spirit. Her husband’s 
voice sounded distant. She was touched and softened 
by the romance of Trent’s long devotion. 

There was no response to her knock. She entered 
and led the way down a dim hall. 

“ Yucca,” she called, “ are you there ” 

Miss Armes opened the door at the further end, 
and her graceful figure struck Trent with a sense of 
[ 78 ] 


CHAPTER SIX 

familiarity. “We were sure you would come,” she 
said. “ Did you knock I fear we were so busy 
talking I didn’t hear you. Good evening, Mr. 
Trent.” 

She gave him her hand cordially. “ Here is Mr. 
Cozzens. If you did not come in he was going to drop 
around later at Mrs. Lispenard’s and meet you. We 
all expect to share our guests out here, you see.” 

Mr. Cozzens rose from the chair in which he had 
been seated, smoking a cigar, and shook hands heartily 
with Trent. 

“ I suppose you’ve heard the little chaps speak of 
me. I’m taking a hand in their education same as 
their father. I’m given to understand by Yucca, here, 
that you’re an old friend.” His voice had a husky 
drawl that was, somehow, impossibly pleasant. 

“ When did you get back from the mines ? ” Mrs. 
Lispenard asked him, as she arranged herself com- 
fortably in a hammock hung across the room. 

“ I swung in to-night,” he answered, resuming his 
seat. His weight disguised his real height, and his 
light clothes intensified this look of bulk, but Trent 
recognised a type in him, and knew that the muscles 
were like steel beneath that almost babyish rotundity 
of face and figure. His sandy hair was cut in a 
comely bang across his forehead, and he wore the 
drooping moustache of the typical cowboy. His eyes 
were remarkable, full and grey, narrowed by long 

[ 79 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


squinting at a shadowless landscape, their dominant 
expression one of command. 

Lispenard began turning over some magazines and 
books on the table. “ I am looking for that review 
you spoke of to-day.” 

“ It is right under your hand,” Miss Armes an- 
swered. “ The page is folded out, isn’t it? ” 

“ Wouldn’t you all like to hear it? ” he asked, seat- 
ing himself. 

“ Oh, dear,” murmured his wife, “ I thought we 
were going to talk.” 

“ Go on,” said Cozzens, turning in his chair so as to 
face the reader squarely. 

She gave him an irritated look, then seeing that 
Trent was watching her she pouted like a pretty child, 
and finally, filled with delicious humour at her own 
absurd affectation, hid her face in the pillows she had 
piled in the hammock, and laughed outright. 

Cozzens looked at her indulgently. “ She’s no older 
than Jim,” he remarked, with husky pleasantry. 

Lispenard read well. He had the full and sympa- 
thetic intonation of the born speaker. But Trent 
made only a pretence of listening. The room and its 
occupants distracted his attention. The lamp shed a 
soft glow and a fire burned on the hearth, and yet it 
seemed to him that the light was unusual, until he 
thought that the bright sunshine of his day on the 
desert had affected his eves somewhat. The room in- 
[ 80 ] 


CHAPTER SIX 

terested him. It was less homelike than the Lispe- 
nards’, but more richly furnished. He had an im- 
pression of Mexican colouring in the suggested orange 
and vermilion tones. He noted the crossed sabres on 
the wall above the mantle, and looked about to see if 
there were a picture of the old major. 

“ What is it.f^ ” his hostess enquired, speaking low, 
so as not to interrupt the reading. 

“Nothing; I was merely looking to see if there 
were a picture of your father,” he answered. 

“ It is in the other room,” she said. She was 
pleased, and he thought she looked at him for the first 
time with liking. He watched her as she resumed her 
basket-weaving. “ I learned how to make baskets from 
the Indians,” she Said. She was seated on a divan that 
ran across the side of the room opposite him. The long 
strands of straw trailed from her lap to the bottom of 
her dress, and there was a bundle of it on the seat be- 
side her. Her face was pale above the tan straw, 
pale and subtly reserved, full of artistic power, more 
youthful than feminine, recalling again his first im- 
pression, that she might have sat for the portrait of 
one’s ideal poet or painter in his early promise. But 
for himself, he admired women like Adele, women who 
were childlike in their maturity, frank, open-hearted, 
sunny. Yet how pale she was ! The walk and long 
climb that day had been too much. He softened chiv- 
alrously as he noted Cozzens’s contrasting ruddi- 
[ 81 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


ness; even Lispenard’s pallor was healthful, and, he 
thought tenderly, without looking at her, that Adele’s 
cheeks were pink and warm as when she was a 
girl. 

“ I am disappointed in it,” Lispenard remarked, as 
he finished the article and flung the paper down. “ It 
is a tangle of platitudes.” 

“No wonder I felt as if I were still out of doors ! ” 
cried Trent suddenly. He had finally realised that 
the wall above the divan was of glass, like a great win- 
dow, and that the long silken curtains were pushed 
back to show the sky. It was no wonder that she had 
looked pale against that background of intense blue 
air. “ I have been wondering and wondering what 
was the matter with my eyes, and hadn’t observed that 
the wall was glass.” Trent, sober, was the frowning 
judge; laughing, he was a great boy. 

“ It was my own idea,” she commenced, when Coz- 
zens interrupted her. 

“ Yes, you can bet it was her own idea,” he said, 
flinging a handful of cigars hospitably on the table 
toward the two men and lighting himself a fresh one. 
He was economical with matches, and he held a burnt 
one over the lamp-chimney until it ignited. “ Yes, 
sir,” puffing, “ she came to me and said, ‘ Cozzens, I’ve 
got a damned good idea ’ ” 

“ I didn’t, either ! ” she cried. “ I merely asked him 
if he didn’t think it would be splendid to sit within 
[ 82 ] 


CHAPTER SIX 


doors and yet be able to see the desert when these 
nights are so wonderful.” 

I ' ‘‘I know it’s beautiful and I know it’s unusual,” 

said Mrs. Lispenard, “ but I don’t like it. I don’t 
think it is homelike. I like to draw the curtains and 
have the boys playing about and Theodore reading. 
That is the only time when the world is quite shut out, 
the only time I don’t have the desert before m}^ 
eyes.” 

While they were speaking the rising moon sent a 
ray of light into the room. It fell on the girl’s hair, 
and its phosphorescent glow recalled to Lispenard the 
rising light they had been watching on the old mis- 
sion. 

“ Santa Ines,” he said, smiling, his eyes as intense 
in their blueness as the brilliant air outside. 

The girl’s white profile grew unreal. The silver 
moonlight slipped to her hands weaving the yellow 
straw. 

‘‘ You remind me of a fairy tale I read in a book I 
bought for my little niece last Christmas, and it was 
so long since I had read such a story that it made quite 
an impression on me,” said Trent. “ I don’t remem- 
ber it in detail. You would probably remember it, 
Theodore,” turning to his friend. “ It was about a 
miller who sold his beautiful daughter to the Evil 
One ” 

“ I think ‘ Evil One ’ is so delightful,” put in Lis- 

[ 83 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


penard. ‘‘ The proper fairy stories always have 
him in.” 

“ And the Evil One cut off both her hands. Then 
the King came along and saw her in the garden eating 
fruit from the trees with her mouth, for of course she 
had no hands. But he married her and had a pair of 
silver hands made for her. Tiggy must have it in some 
book of his,” ended Trent, looking at Adele. 

“ I don’t remember it,” she answered. 

Surprised at her tone, he glanced closely at her, 
and saw that her colour was feverishly bright and her 
eyes wet with unshed tears. He knew instinctively 
that she was hurt and jealous. He had guessed her 
resentment of the girl’s beauty, and knew that she 
must now feel he had joined with Lispenard in admir- 
ing her. Her pained humiliation went to his heart. 
He longed to convey his loyalty and devotion by a 
look, a gesture, some mere ordinary word. He could 
not bear to have her suffer. She was like a grieving 
child. But he did not suggest his sympathy in any 
way, and the denial was like a physical wrench. 

“ I am tired,” she said, rising ; “ I must go.” 

“ No,” said Cozzens, “ don’t go yet. Don’t you 
want to hear my new song.?^ I got it from a Mexican 
at the mines.” 

Her husband looked up in some surprise. “ It isn’t 
eleven o’clock yet,” drawing out his watch as he 
spoke. 


[ 84 ] 


CHAPTER SIX 

She hesitated, then yielded, and resumed her place 
in the hammock. 

“ She has times when she gets anxious about those 
two little chaps,” said Cozzens. “ Lord bless you, 
who’d hurt them? ” 

She smiled faintly. “ Tiggy is such a baby yet.” 

Trent’s heart was aching. She had never been more 
lovable to him than in the emotions through which 
he saw her pass, the jealous hurt, the impulse to leave, 
her womanly yielding for fear she would spoil the 
others’ pleasure ; her accepting Cozzens’s remark about 
the children, in her pride, lest her real motive for wish- 
ing to go might be guessed. 

Cozzens was strumming on Miss Armes’s mandolin, 
picking out a tune to which he sang a song in the Mex- 
ican patois. He had a rich, throaty voice, and the 
little song was gay. It cleared the atmosphere of the 
room. 

Miss Armes rose and drew the long curtains to- 
gether. 

“ I know you don’t like so much moonlight,” she 
said, and Mrs. Lispenard thanked her with a smile. 

“ I know I am foolish,” she murmured, her dimples 
restored. 

“ This side of the room leads into the court,” con- 
tinued Miss Armes, rising ; “ come and see, Mr. Trent. 
It is scarcely warm enough to sit out there to-night.” 

He followed her through the door she opened, and 

[ 86 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


found himself in a narrow corridor with a colonnade, 
the slim pillars of which ended in arches at the top in 
the Moorish style. This corridor ran about the four 
sides of a small court. 

He had an impression of tropical luxuriance. He 
heard the splash of spray in the basin of a fountain, 
and saw the white blossoms of the magnolia. 

“ This is like the fairy-story,” he remarked. “ It 
must have been in some such garden as this that the 
miller’s daughter walked and ate from the trees.” 

“ Yes,” she rejoined, “ my father planted pome- 
granates and figs and olives and apricots. The apri- 
cots we had at luncheon to-day came from here. Did 
you know you all forgot the rest of that story The 
king became jealous and sent the poor maiden away, 
but at last he repented, for he saw he had been de- 
ceived by the Evil One. So he went in search of her, 
and when he found her, her two white hands had grown 
again, by the grace of God, so that she did not need 
the silver ones any more.” 

Within, Cozzens was humming his gay serenade. 
The tinkle of the mandolin blended with the falling 
spray of the fountain. Trent’s pulses were stirred. 
An ineffable sweetness was in the air, and he was con- 
scious of the girl beside him, strange and beautiful 
mistress of this strange house and garden ! 

“ You like that little Mexican song, don’t you, 
Jarvey.f^ ” called Mrs. Lispenard. She could see him 
[ 86 ] 


CHAPTER SIX 


standing in the light of the open doorway, and ob- 
served the look of dreaming in his face. “ You always 
loved music. I remember. You must get Yucca to 
play for you.” 

Her fresh, pretty voice recalled him to her side. 
The sweetness of the garden was cloying; its sugges- 
tion of romance unpleasant to him. 

They sat and talked until late, Trent’s mood very 
tender with his sense of protection toward Adele as 
she swung gently in the hammock beside his chair. 
Lispenard made him indignant, much as he loved the 
quality of the man. His friend talked wisely, wittily, 
reading a paragraph from one book, a verse from 
another, always instructive, never pedantic, enjoying 
the spell his own talk cast even upon himself. 

His wife’s judgment changed. She had been 
wrong. ‘‘ A voice crying in the wilderness ! ” No, 
no, no, she said to herself, it was not so. She resolved 
to go back and re-read his chapter in a different mood. 
Her pride in him returned as she saw that his intellec- 
tual poise was more marked than that of the other two 
men. No one yielded to the spell of his personality 
more quickly than she. 

At last he C£},me over and sat down in the hammock 
by her side, tired with his restless walking about the 
room. The lamp was so low that Miss Armes blew 
out the waning flame and heaped on more wood in the 
fireplace. 


[ 87 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


Trent saw Lispenard take his wife’s hand and 
hold it between both of his. He was surprised and 
pleased that he felt no pang of jealousy. Surely 
Theodore must care for her as she deserved. Yet he 
recalled the peculiar happiness with which he had 
seemed to regard Miss Armes when they had been on 
the mountain that day, and was puzzled. If he loved 
her how could he be happy, being the honourable man 
he was ; and if he didn’t love her why should the mere 
sight of her make him so happy ? 

“ Of course, you needn’t believe it if you don’t want 
to, but I’ve seen the strangest sight,” said Mrs. Lis- 
penard, “ and Theodore just laughs at me. But 
it’s true, Theodore, you horrid thing.” 

“ We’re going back to the primitive experiences of 
mankind,” he said, his voice quivering with amuse- 
ment. ‘‘ My wife has discovered a were-wolf prowling 
about the house.” 

“ I never said a were-wolf,” she retorted. “ I said 
a common grey wolf.” 

“ They’re mighty common this season,” said Coz- 
zens, ceasing his touch on the mandolin for a moment. 
“ Too little rain makes them fierce. They’re hang- 
ing around pretty close.” 

“ And Tiggy tells me it’s a friend of his,” she 
ended. 

“ Poor Tiggy,” said his father. “ He is cursed 
with an imagination.” 


[ 88 ] 


CHAPTER SIX 


“ And it has one paw lopped off,” added Miss 
Armes. “ The little fellow confided that much in 
me.” 

“ I have never seen it,” Mrs. Lispenard admitted. 

‘‘ I shall never get over this, Trent ! ” cried her 
husband, “ never. I suppose it’s the same wolf the 
soldier turned into in that story of Petronius.” 

Adele’s scornful glance convulsed him. She turned 
her hack on them both and addressed herself to Miss 
Armes and Cozzens. 

“ Tiggy never tells a lie.” 

“ This will be the death of me,” Lispenard cried. 

Cozzens leant forward across the mandolin on his 
knee. His shrewd eyes were speculative. “ Where do 
you think you saw it.^ They can laugh,” with a nod 
toward the two men, “ but I’ve seen queer things 
around camp in my time that have set me thinking.” 
Clever, hard-headed, as he was, he had a mystical vein 
in his nature that made him attach weight to the 
supernatural. 

“ I’ve seen it,” said Miss Armes, “ and it has a paw 
lopped off just as Tiggy said. It ran by in the road 
one night.” 

“ No,” said Cozzens, “ it wouldn’t come further 
than the outskirts of the town.” 

But she held persistently to her story. Not even 
when it was time to go, and they said it was only fair 
to drop the joke and tell them ‘the real truth, 

[ 89 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

would she admit it was otherwise than she had first 
said. 

Adele kissed her good-bye at the door. She was so 
pleased to have her story corroborated that her good 
spirits were restored. It dawned upon Trent that the 
two women were really fond of each other in spite of 
Adele’s jealousy. 

He went away amused. As he followed the other 
three through the rOse-arbour, he looked back over his 
shoulder and saw their hostess standing in the door- 
way, holding the candle with which she had lighted 
them through the long hall. He reached the gate, 
and she closed the door. 

He and Cozzens said good-night to the Lispenards 
at their gate, and went on together down the lonely 
street toward the plaza. 

“ I only came in here last night,” he said, “ and 
yet I feel as if I had lived here a long time.” 

Cozzens was delighted. “ It’s because it’s home out 
here to every stranger that comes along.” 

Late though it was, he would not let Trent go to the 
station, but took him up in his own room, which was 
above the bank. He owned the building. “ It’s the 
most up-to-date one in town,” he said. 

Trent followed him up the stairs through two con- 
necting offices into his bedroom beyond. It was a 
large, clean room, having a very bright wall-paper and 
a set of cheap oak furniture. “ I had that put in for 
[ 90 ] 


Jt 


CHAPTER SIX 

looks,” said Cozzens, pointing to a sham fireplace.” 
I can’t stand the muss and dirt a fire makes.” 

It seemed to his guest that he had never been in 
such a bare and orderly place. A towel was spread on 
the bureau, and on this were a lamp, a whisk-broom, 
and a brush and comb. A photograph of Lispenard’s 
boys stood against the mirror, and was the only 
picture in the room. On the mantle were a small china 
barrel which held cigars, an ash-receiver, and two 
paper-backed novels laid exactly, one on the other. 

Cozzens lighted the lamp and put some water in a 
tin cup, which he placed by means of a patented ar- 
rangement over the chimney. While the water was 
heating he brought out whiskey and glasses from his 
closet and placed the barrel of cigars on the table. 
“ We’ll have a nippy,” he said cheerfully. 

Trent read the titles of the books on the mantel, and 
saw they were not literature according to his under- 
standing of it. He found such companionship in his 
books that there was always something pathetic to him 
in a man who did not know the fine flavour that the 
best gives. He did not know when he had been so 
drawn toward a man as he was toward Cozzens. Lis- 
penard had already told him of this man, of his pic- 
turesque career, his splendid service as superintendent 
of Indian affairs in Arizona. It was believed that he 
knew the country and its various trails as no other 
man did; he spoke Spanish and the Mexican 'patois 
[ 91 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


like a native; he had amassed an immense fortune; 
and those powerful shoulders had once carried for 
over fifty miles a sick woman abandoned on a trail to 
die of thirst — a feat of almost superhuman strength 
in that alkali country. 

Trent felt his heart warm toward him as he talked 
enthusiastically of the wonderful climate with its 
health-giving property, his faith in the open-hearted 
energetic people, and their great resources in the gold 
and silver mines. He saw that it was the boundless 
freedom of the West which had let him develop. He 
would always have been a power, but in the East he 
might have been only a controller of the money mar- 
ket, or a political boss. “ He has no culture, but he 
has imagination. It was he who named Sahuaro,” 
Lispenard had told Trent on the way home from 
Miss Armes’s as Cozzens walked ahead with Adele. 
“ I pointed out to-day the cactus of that name — a 
fluted Greek column broken at the top, you remem- 
ber ” 

Cozzens smoked incessantly. He saw that his guest 
noted his habit of keeping his left hand in his pocket. 

“ You wonder what I keep jingling that money 
for,” he said. “ Well, the truth of the matter is, that 
when I was young I ran against hard lines, and money 
came hard. Well, I’ve got a lot now on paper and 
land and a hundred thousand cattle, too, and all that, 
but none of it gives me half the satisfaction and sense 
[ 92 ] 


CHAPTER SIX 

of security that them few birds in my pocket do. 
Roughing it on the desert as I do has taught me there 
ain’t anything so valuable as what you got on you. 
A whole river somewhere else ain’t going to satisfy you 
like one bottle of warmish water if you’re off on an 
alkali plain, and I hold the same thing’s true about 
money. I always keep a good handful of gold pieces 
in my pocket. And I like to feel them there. This 
having so much on paper goes against a fellow who’s 
washed up the real stuff himself.” 

He laughed, for with all his naivete he knew that no 
one made shrewder investments than he did himself. 

It was long past one o’clock when they parted. 
Trent had not been given a key to the hotel. It was 
not Haydon’s custom to give one, and in this he was a 
tyrant, for what curious reason no one knew. As 
Trent waited for him to open the door that night he 
had a delicious sense of getting in too late. It was so 
long since he had been responsible to anyone for his 
comings and goings that he enjoyed this new sensa- 
tion. He even found himself apologetic when the sta- 
tion-master, barefooted, and in his shirt and trousers, 
let him in. 

Haydon was magnanimous. It’s all right. 
Judge.” He had found out his guest’s profession, and 
did it honour. “ I want any gentleman to feel that 
he’s at home in this house. I’m afraid I kept you 
waiting. I was so dead asleep.” 

[ 93 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

Trent found his room as he had left it in the morn- 
ing, and he was obliged to make up the bed himself 
before he could retire. No morbid thoughts kept him 
awake this night. He went to sleep like a child, and 
did not waken until late into the morning. 


[ 94 ] 


CHAPTER VII 


A FORTNIGHT passed by, and Jarvis Trent 
still lingered. The delight of the climate was 
upon him. The air of the semi-tropical 
desert gave him a fresh lease of life. He got a horse 
and went for long rides. He had been too poor when 
a younger man to have a saddle-horse, and when he 
could have afforded it the thought of such a luxury, 
through long denial, never entered his mind. But 
here everyone rode. He had expected to spend his va- 
cation in an extended trip through the West ; he found 
himself tempted to spend it all in Sahuaro. He was 
gone several days with Cozzens on a trip to the mines. 
Jim was allowed to go with them, and the three had 
their own tent in the mining camp, which had been 
named Marble City. Trent had never seen a place so 
forlorn before, nor had he known until then that a 
forlorn place could be so cheerful. Coming home the 
mountain trail one hot noon they met the opposite of 
Cozzens, the type of the unsuccessful prospector, a 
bowed, worn figure, grey with alkali dust, muttering to 
himself, his glazed eyes still bright with hope of find- 
ing fabled gold. He remained a haunting memory to 
Trent for years. Trent invested in some mining prop- 
erty, and made this an additional excuse for lingering 
in Sahuaro. He began to see how it was that a man 
[ 95 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

might let time glide by in such a place, excusing his 
inertia by the thought that he intended sometime to 
return to the East, which must always be home in the 
best sense to the person bom there. He sought the 
acquaintance of the mission priest, urged by his de- 
sire to know better the desert and its people. The old 
man kept much to himself, having learned reserve from 
the Indians among whom he had lived so long. His 
physical resemblance to them was great. His grey hair 
hung straight to his shoulders beneath his black som- 
brero, and his skin was brown as his brown rosary. The 
silver crucifix heiworewias an ancient one, and he held as 
sacred talismans parchment scripts by the holy fathers 
which had been found hidden in Santa Ines. He was 
indifferent to the crumbling beauty of the old mission, 
and had a new narrow chamber of a church where he 
and his Indian acolytes held services. And Trent 
could never make out as he chatted with him whether 
the old priest were more Christian or Pagan, so imbued 
was he with the superstitions of his Indian people. 
To Lispenard he seemed both ignorant and dogmatic. 
He had lived too long near him to get the same pic- 
turesque view that his friend did. Trent’s pleasure 
had become simple. The arrival of the Overland 
train started his morning properly; its coming at 
night was the event to be looked forward to all day. 
He and the invalid were the only guests of the hotel 
at present, and they made each other’s acquaintance 

[ 96 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

as they sat out on the balcony with its border of 
flower-boxes. He was surprised to learn that the 
young fellow was homesick until he was shown the 
picture of a girl inside the cover of his watch. 
But he saw the boy’s spirits brighten as he grew 
stronger, and finally he was well enough to take a 
position on a cattle-ranch. Trent missed him. He 
had not seen any evidence of coloured blood in him, 
and he learned afterward that it was Haydon’s weak- 
ness to suspect most dark-skinned people who were 
not out-and-out Mexicans and Spaniards of this 
hereditary taint. The station-master confided to him 
that Mr. Lispenard paid for the room and the lux- 
uries which the invalid had enjoyed. Trent was 
touched to hear that his friend gave so much out of a 
salary he knew must be meagre, and spoke to him of 
his own wish to contribute something. Lispenard was 
embarrassed. “ It is the least I can do. It’s con- 
science-money. I am not the proper kind of parish 
priest. Don’t you remember, I told you so.? If I 
were I would get hold of those forlorn strangers my- 
self. But I’m not sympathetic with sick people. 
They antagonise me, and I antagonise them. Haydon 
is a born nurse, and I put those matters in his hands. 
It’s the least I can do.” 

Evening after evening he and the Lispenards and 
Cozzens and Miss Armes spent together with the same 
eager pleasure in their mutual society as if they were 

[ 97 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

children. Through them he made the acquaint- 
ance of an old Spanish family, and gained an in- 
sight into customs and traditions new to him. Not 
for many years had he taken such delight in the 
company of his fellows. He encountered opinions, but 
not prejudices; the atmosphere was too big for per- 
sonalities, and so he found that while he liked Miss 
Armes no better than at first, they got along together 
fairly well. He learned to appreciate the quality of 
her mind, if he never felt any warmth for her. That 
moment of fascination, of intoxicating sweetness, when 
he stood near her in the fragrant enchantment of her 
garden had never returned. Her charm that night 
was like a vanished perfume; he might recognise it 
again, but he did not remember it. Like ship- 
wrecked people, none who desired the society of his 
fellows could afford the indulgence of dislike. Their 
common humanity drew them together in that vast 
and lonely desert. He was convinced that she was at- 
tached to Lispenard, but his mind did not dwell on the 
suspicion. It seemed ungenerous on his part to do 
so, and he thought, too, that her frequent visits to the 
Lispenards’ home, were also due to her desire to get 
away from her lonely house, filled with memories of 
her father. And he was invariably touched and soft- 
ened when he noticed the old cape about her. He had 
known women who wore the army insignia for the sake 
of their lovers, or because they were becoming, but 
[ 98 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


she wore the Major’s cape over her slender shoulders 
as if in mourning for him. Trent did not permit 
himself to think whether Lispenard cared for the girl 
in turn or not ; he knew his friend too well to take him 
seriously as regarded women. 

Small as the place was there was no spirit of gossip 
in it. These people were the reverse of the New 
England country people he had known. Far out of 
the world as they were, they yet seemed to be in touch 
with it. They were full of inspiration; they were 
filled with the spirit of the opening West. He saw 
that passionate hatreds and loves existed and often led 
to the taking of life, but those pettier emotions, the 
vague jealousies, pique, disloyalty, that miasma of the 
spirit, vanished in such perpetual sunshine, for the 
soul as well as the body seemed to be steeped in it. He 
was still convinced that he loved Adele as dearly as 
ever, but the first fever of meeting her subsided, and he 
felt much as he did when they were children, and she 
had chosen Lispenard to be her little lover. That 
childish instinct had been the true one; her later en- 
gagement to him had been the mistake, for he saw that 
she worshipped Lispenard. But as far as he was con- 
cerned she would always be the first and only woman 
in the world. 

The only depressing experience he had was his at- 
tendance at church. He and Cozzens arrived home 
Saturday night from the mines and went to church to- 

[ 99 ] 


LoFC. 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


gether. In front of them sat Mrs. Lispenard and the 
two boys. The congregation was meagre, a mere 
handful of people. Miss Armes was there, and sat 
alone. Her old Mexican housekeeper attended the 
Roman Catholic mission. The music was feeble, and 
Lispenard preached above the heads of most of his 
congregation. It was a disheartening service, and one 
that left Trent, who was no church-member, pro- 
foundly depressed for his friend’s sake. He felt that 
the man’s brilliancy was lost. Above the altar was the 
round window with its grey lamb. The lamb had an 
absurdly cynical expression, and he did not wonder at 
Lispenard’s aversion to it and his temptation to throw 
a stone through it. 

There was no evening service, and Lispenard 
dragged his two friends off for a walk, insisting that 
they owed him that much after their absence. He had 
worked hard on the revision of his book while they 
were at the mines, and had it ready to send on its 
rounds to the publishers. “ The only thing which 
troubles me,” he said, “ is the money for express I 
may have to pay out.” 

When he went home a little before ten, leaving Coz- 
zens and Trent to their cigars on the balcony of the 
depot, his early departure was due to his desire to 
wrap up his manuscript and count the pages once 
more to see that they were in order. He opened the 
gate and walked hastily up to the house, wondering 
[ 100 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

if Adele had paper and twine for him. He had an 
appreciative thought of how absolutely he relied on 
her housewifely spirit to have things always ready for 
his convenience. 

He found her alone at his desk. The boys had 
gone to bed. 

“ Are you writing letters, my dear ? ” he en- 
quired, searching for his pipe on the mantel. It 
seemed long since he had smoked. Cozzens’s cigars 
were so heavy he never touched one of them. 

“ To whom would I write.? ” she answered. “ What 
friends have I left.? I have lived so long out here that 
they have forgotten me.” 

His mood of happiness and anticipation which had 
brought him home so joyfully, vanished. He put 
back his pipe on the mantel and sat down with a sud- 
den weariness. “ What would you have me to do.? 
I have told you if I received a call to another parish 
I would go.” 

« Why do you think to deceive me, Theodore ? ” she 
asked. “ You do not anger me. I cannot quarrel 
with you, but you know and I know that if you re- 
ceived such a call you would destroy the letter rather 
than show it to me, for fear of my insistence that you 
should accept the opening.” 

“ What has changed you so, Adele .? ” he asked. 
“ Is it Trent’s coming.? Has he made you discon- 
tented.? ” 


[ 101 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ Yes,” she said. “ You both started out even in 
the world. If anything, people thought you the 
more gifted. I see him now, well-off, his reputation 
established, well-dressed, while you are so shabby 
that I notice it and am hurt when I see you together. 
I have been sitting here while you were gone and try- 
ing to make up our accounts. We are poorer than 
ever.” 

His relief was so great that he felt a rebound of 
spirits. This adding up of accounts invariably in- 
duced a tragic mood in Adele. “ My dear,” he said, 
now genially, “ it isn’t wisdom in our financial straits 
ever to figure up. Ignorance is bliss in our case. The 
burning question of the moment is, not next Sunday’s 
chicken, but whether we have the money in the house 
to pay the express on my book to-morrow morning. 
I would send it C. O. D., if I were not afraid that 
might prejudice the publishers. What do you 
think .f* ” He could not win a smile from her. “At 
least we have enough to eat and drink and clothes and 
good health.” 

“ So have the Indians,” she answered stormily. 
“ Are we no better than they.? You may despise lux- 
ury. But I want money for my children. I am 
mortified that so often they have been obliged to wear 
things sent to us in missionary boxes. It does not mat- 
ter that my life has been ruined.” 

He was troubled at last. “ Do you mean that I 

[ 102 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

have ruined your life, Adele? ” Then, with that sensi- 
tive frown so characteristic of both him and Tiggy 
when troubled, he added gently, “ I thought we had 
been so happy here.” 

“ Ah, Theodore,” she said with increasing bitter- 
ness, “ your egotism never permits you to see your 
children’s necessity nor to judge how I may feel. I 
have hated it so here that I have sometimes felt I 
could leave you gladly if that would be leaving the 
desert behind.” Her words seemed to clear her own 
mind. Why should she not leave? Why not? How 
aloof they were ! What had she in common with this 
threadbare philosopher, troubled now and made un- 
certain by her passionate appeal? She thought of Jar- 
vis Trent, to whom she had once been engaged. He 
stood for what she had lost, worldly position, comfort, 
the means to do for her children. Her face burned. 

As yet Lispenard had not answered. His blue 
eyes were fixed on her in a puzzled gaze. 

“ Oh, Theodore,” she cried, “ for God’s sake, stop 
thinking and feel something! Can nothing hurt you, 
can nothing touch you?” She laughed at the ab- 
surdity of such an appeal to him, and her mingled 
emotions brought her to tears. 

He rose and came around the table to her. “ Adele, 
if you will have patience my book will bring in money 
yet.” 

“ Oh, no it won’t ! ” she cried. “ What money have 

[ 103 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


you ever made out of anything you have written ? In 
your inmost heart you despise money. Cozzens could 
have made you a rich man if you had allowed him to 
invest our poor little savings. But, no ; you must put 
them all in books. You do not care what we lack. I 
tell you, Theodore, I have lost you. The desert has 
taken you from me. You do not love your boys. You 
are sweet and pleasant until I could wish you were 
hateful, if that would only show you cared. You can- 
not deceive me. And I have ceased to mean much to 
you. Why, Jarvis Trent is more conscious of me than 
you ; he ” She stopped, shamed by her own words. 

“ Adele,” he said, striving to take her hand, “ I 
have never loved any woman but you.” 

“ That was your past self,” she said. “ You have 
ceased to regard me now. And I am sick of living on 
the past and consoling myself with memories of the 
time when you did. Oh, do not, if you h;ave any 
respect for us both, talk of love again to me! You 
care more to-day for Cozzens, for Yucca Armes, than 
for me and the boys. And I have ceased to care for 
you. You love truth, Theodore ; then have it. Your 
heart is dying within you. What kind of a clergy- 
man are you.^^ It is all pretence. You do not love 
your congregation nor your church. They weary and 
bore you as I do. And now that you have taught me 
the lesson of giving way to one’s own selfish desire, 
I may as well tell you that your philosophy has made 
[ 104 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

me hate religion, and your passion for poverty has 
made me long for luxury. I am going to leave you.” 
She was trembling, but no longer tearful. 

Her words did not alarm him; he knew her bitter 
mood would pass, but he thought of the limitless 
desert, and had a picture of his poor passionate wife 
trudging away on foot, anywhere, to be relieved of 
his presence. “ I wish I had money to send you away 
for a change.” 

His words softened her, for she knew they were sin- 
cere. No one could be kinder than Theodore when his 
sympathies were aroused. She hid her face in her 
hands, and the tears trickled through her fingers and 
fell on the sheet of paper, blurring her careful figur- 
ing. She spoke brokenly. “ I used to tell myself 
when Jim was a little baby that I would never love 
him best. He was given to me to take care of, but you 
chose me out of all the world. I wanted to be faith- 
ful to our earliest love. I was romantic. But I have 
changed. Our children have separated us.” 

“ I don’t think I quite understand you, my dear,” 
he said, frowning in his distress. 

“ Had there been just you and me I should have re- 
mained content even here, for you were my world,” 
she said piteously ; “ but you threw all the respon- 
sibility of the children on me until I have become ab- 
sorbed in them to the exclusion of you.” She re- 
peated the words, “ to the exclusion of you.” 

[ 105 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ I think you are making a mistake,” he answered. 
“ I am not brutal, and yet you will think me so when I 
say that you are self-indulgent. You have let your 
maternal love become a kind of intemperance with you 
so that you see everything from that standpoint.” 

‘‘ You do not care for them,” she flamed out at 
him, “ you do not care for them.” 

“ I do care for them,” he said, with more sternness 
than he had ever used toward her. “ But you are 
right when you say I am not wrapped up in them. 
Why should I be? I love them and I appreciate them 
as individuals, but I should be a hypocrite if I said 
that at present my own life did not interest me more. 
I may in time sink my own ambition in my hopes for 
them. But that will be when they are older.” 

“ And what of them in the meantime? ” she asked. 
“ While you are doing what pleases yourself who will 
educate them as they should be? Your sons are the 
children of gentle people, but what associates have 
they here? I am still able to keep Tiggy with me, 
but Jim spends his spare moments with that crowd 
which hangs around Haydon.” 

“ He is learning life there,” he answered, “ just as 
Trent and I learned it at the corner-grocery when we 
were his age.” 

“ You call yourself ambitious, Theodore,” she said, 
as if she had not heard his last remark. She looked 
incredulously at him, his shabby coat, his delicate, 
[ 106 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


troubled face. Her mood of the other day returned 
to her. “ The voice of one crying in the wilderness ! ” 
The words rang in her ears as though they were 
spoken aloud. And she had followed that voice in her 
girlhood, that fond and foolish girlhood. She looked 
at her husband with aversion. She longed to crush 
him by repeating that terrible phrase. Ah, could he 
but realise how she felt and see himself as he was ! 

He put his hand on her bowed shoulder, and she 
thrust his arm away with a movement so violent that 
it was like a blow. He sat down and covered his eyes 
with his hand. The scene was humiliating to 
him. 

She recalled his words of only a short while ago: 
“ I thought we had been so happy here.” 

“ Theodore,” she said, “ Theodore.” 

He took his hands from his eyes and tried to smile 
at her, grateful for any overture that would lead to 
peace. She put her arms out to him across the corner 
of the table, and he bent forward to kiss her. His 
lips were cold with emotion. She leant forward until 
her head rested on his breast as he sat next to her, and 
he put his arm about her. A sense of happiness and 
comfort deeper than she had known for years swept 
over her. Once more his mood was that of protection. 
She felt restored to wifehood. She could feel his heart 
throbbing beneath her cheek, the poor heart which at 
one time had threatened to invalid him. 

[ 107 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


Lispenard, waiting for his wife’s sobs to die down, 
held her closely. The clasp of his arm was warm about 
her, but above her head his blue eyes gazed out of the 
window past the shaded lamp with a far-away expres- 
sion. Between the half -drawn curtains he could see 
the soft yellow stars of the moonless night, and he 
thought of their courtship. Then love-making had 
been their supreme duty, the plan on which the world 
was made. Adele had clung to their early romance; 
she had lived in her affections and developed no intel- 
lectual interests. He was filled with compassion for 
her. She reproached him that he had ceased to care. 
She did not realise that what she longed for was the 
glamour of youth. She would be eternally won. She 
could not learn that every soul was happy only as it 
stood alone, when it was able to resign all affections 
which were tormenting because they possessed the ele- 
ment of personality. He wished that she might grasp 
the present for its own sake, and not always view it by 
its contrast with the past. 

She withdrew herself gently from his arms. “ I do 
not feel as if we could sleep, either of us,” she said. 
“ Would you like to take a little walk.?^ ” For the sake 
of his own dignity and hers, she would not speak of 
this scene between them again. She saw that it was 
useless to attempt to make him understand how she 
felt about the boys. She got him his hat and cane, 
drew her lace scarf about her head and shoulders, and 
[ 108 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

waited while he turned down the lamp. She saw him 
hesitate. 

“ What is it, dear.? ” she asked him. 

“ I was going to get my book ready to go by the 
early express,” he said. 

The motherliness of her nature went out to comfort 
him. “ How would it be if we did that first and took 
our walk later.? ” she proposed. 

“ Thank you,” he said gratefully. 

She went out into the kitchen and brought back 
some stout twine and paper. She had no faith in his 
writings, but she forced a smile to her lips. A vague 
plan she had been thinking over for the past week took 
definite shape in her mind as she watched him. Finally 
he sat down at the desk and directed the package. 

“ I don’t know when I have been apprehensive be- 
fore, but suppose it should be lost,” he remarked as 
he rose. 

They went out together into the quiet street of the 
sleeping town. His nature was gentle. He was glad 
for the restored peace and that she took his arm. 

“We have the quietness of old friends,” he said, 
turning to her with a smile. 

She could not speak. And he had once been her 
young and ardent lover ! 

“ When you look and smile at me like that, Adele,” 
he said, “ I know you forgive me much, even my pov- 


[ 109 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


Pride kept the smile on her lips. He should never 
know how he wounded her. Yet there burned in her 
the one question she most longed to ask, longed so to 
utter that he read something of her desire in her eyes. 

“ What is it, Adele.^^ Are you keeping something 
from me ^ Do you want to tell it to me ? ” 

Between his face and hers she seemed to see another. 
Had it been less beautiful she could have spoken. Its 
perfection was fatal. She would not humiliate herself 
by comparison with it. Her soul took refuge in the 
dignity of her motherhood. For her children’s sake, 
she would not ask their father the question which trem- 
bled on her lips. 

“ No,” she answered, “ it was nothing.” 

Lispenard, restored to harmony, spoke of the 
thoughts which come to one under the open sky at 
night. She listened to him with a certain dutifulness, 
but she felt that her spirit had gone beyond his in its 
suffering, and that he lacked the sympathy to under- 
stand her. 

The night was sweet about them. The stars shone 
resplendently in the dark heavens, not with the scin- 
tillating brightness of the north, but with a lambent, 
yellow glow. 

“ Have you ever thought that the sky on Sunday 
night always has a solemn look to one from long asso- 
ciation of church-going on that evening? ” he said. 
“ It is a fancy I had as a child. I used to think the 
[ 110 ] 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


stars never looked very merry Sunday evenings. They 
didn’t twinkle enough to suit me then. I ought to love 
Sunday, but I don’t.” 

They stood looking up some moments, and at last 
she lowered her gaze to his face. What vision did he 
see that she could not.? Why did he have so often 
that impersonal, secret look which seemed to remove 
his spirit far from hers? 

She looked over the wide desert ; she saw the ragged 
black mountains, cutting like great shadows into the 
starry sky ; the stillness was appalling. She felt as if 
her heart were breaking. 

“ Theodore,” she said, putting her hands on his 
shoulders, “ look at me just once as you used to. Look 
at me kindly, Theodore, in the old way. Do not make 
me feel I mean nothing to you.” 


[Ill] 


CHAPTER VIII 


T here were white clouds in the blue sky, and 
they were dazzling as snow on sunlit peaks. 
Jarvis Trent felt that he could have spent 
hours watching that brilliant panorama of white and 
blue. 

“ I shall take a vacation out here every year,” he 
said enthusiastically, breaking the long silence that 
had fallen between him and Mrs. Lispenard. 

The two were alone on her veranda, waiting for 
Lispenard to return. A parishioner, an old person 
who had been ill a long time, had sent for him early in 
the afternoon, and he had not yet come back. 

She looked up from her sewing. “ So you too find 
it beautiful, Jarvey? ” 

He had forgotten that she disliked the country, and 
that he had sympathised with her when he first came. 

“ You need not look at me so anxiously to see if you 
have hurt my feelings,” she continued, with some 
amusement. “ I knew you would grow to love it here. 
I am not surprised. But when I die, it shall be like 
FalstafF, ‘ babbling o’ green fields ’ ! ” 

“ Adele ! ” he exclaimed. It was he who was hurt 
by her cold tone. 


[ 112 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHT 

“ I am not blaming you,” she retorted, with a flash 
of anger. “ I am glad you find it beautiful. But why 
should it be denied to me to find it beautiful, when my 
life is laid out here.? I have prayed often and often 
that I might learn to love it. It is all hideous to me. 
There is nothing sweet. I am glad that neither of my 
boys was a girl. This would have been no place to 
bring up a little daughter.” 

She bent her head over her sewing again and worked 
rapidly on a shirtwaist she was making for Tigg3^ 
The breeze stirred the brown curls at the nape of her 
pretty neck. 

“ Don’t you see how hideous it all is ? ” she con- 
tinued, pinning the shoulder-seam to her dress at the 
knee, that she might get a firmer hold of the cloth, 
and starting a buttonhole. “ There is no peace in this 
desert, still as it is. Everything is fighting for its 
life. Even the flowers are armed. I have never ad- 
mired their strange colouring. They have no fra- 
grance. Theodore talks about their character. It 
is ridiculous to talk of a flower having character. I 
hate their morbid tints. What do I care about their 
admirable fitness to their environment.? He might as 
well try to convince me that a mole is as beautiful as 
a bird, because it is fitted to burrow under the ground 
and hasn’t any eyes. Often I think the sea will reach 
us somehow, and rush in and claim the desert for its 
own ! ” 


[ 113 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

For the life of him, he couldn’t have taken her seri- 
ously at that moment. She looked so pretty, and she 
was so angry. Her eyes challenged his contradiction. 

“ It hurts me to have you like the desert. I feel that 
you are siding with Theodore against me.” 

“ Against you ! ” he echoed, stung to the quick. 

“ Then why do you say you like it? ” she cried pas- 
sionately, her eyes filling with tears. “ It is a land of 
thirst and starvation. Can you imagine any man 
naming his child after a thing which would grow out 
here? And yet Major Armes named his daughter 
after the yucca, with its scentless yellow flowers and 
its thorns like spikes. You needn’t look so incredu- 
lous, Jarvey. The flowers and trees have thorns like 
spikes, great spikes ! ” Her dimples came and went at 
her exaggeration. She continued more calmly. ‘‘ I 
feel as if I were in an evil land, and that all the rest of 
you have taken a draught from some witch’s cup, so 
that you are enchanted and can see beauty only in 
what is hideous. I believe that if we had had a little 
daughter, Theodore would have wanted to name her 
Cactus ! ” She shuddered. 

He could not help laughing. “ I have been think- 
ing you looked very young and pretty as you sat there 
scolding me. Was that a delusion on my part? ” 

Her colour rose. Oh, well, you know what I 
mean.” She was pleased. “ And you think Yucca 
Armes is beautiful. I can see that you do.” She could 
[ 114 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHT 

not mention the girl’s name in that connection to her 
husband, but she would scold Jarvej Trent as much 
as she pleased. 

“ You read a great deal into me,” he answered, his 
amusement deepening. He stooped to pick up one of 
the buttons she had dropped, and restored it to’ her 
work-basket. It no longer troubled him to see her 
using the gold thimble he had given her when they 
were engaged. 

She spoke rapidly, as though it were a relief. “ If 
you learn to like the desert you will like her. You can- 
not see what I mean now, but you will if you stay long 
enough. And I hate her as I hate it. I cannot see her 
beauty.” There was a silence. When she finally 
broke it her words and manner were humble. “ I do 
not mean that I do not like her, too. She has always 
been lovely to me and kind to the children, and Theo- 
dore has enjoyed talking to her. I think I have learned 
from Theodore not to be severe in my judgments. She 
cannot help being what she is. Sometimes I don’t even 
think she knows what she is like,” with a solemn look. 
“ And when we are alone together I love her. She is 
the only congenial woman friend I have out here, 

but ” She paused, at a loss to explain further 

what she felt, and sat staring helplessly out at the 
sandy road. 

“ My poor little child ! ” he cried, forgetting 
everything save that she was Adele, whom he had 
[ 116 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


known almost since her babyhood. All the chivalry of 
his strong nature was wakened. 

“ Jarvey,” she said, turning to him, “ I want to ask 
a favour of you. I have been trying for days to see 
you alone.” She glanced about nervously, as if even 
then she feared there might be someone to see and 
hear them. 

“ Yes,” he said simply. He stood ready to do any- 
thing she might ask of him, trusting her too fully to 
doubt the worthiness of the request. 

“ I don’t know how to ask it,” she said. Her cheeks 
were burning. “ I want you to lend me some money.” 

He stammered in his amazement. “ It is all yours 
— all I have.” 

She was mortified by his surprise. “ You do not 
understand. We are so poor.” 

He was filled with shame that he had forgotten his 
friend’s poverty, and he realised that for the first time 
in years he had been unconscious of either poverty or 
riches. Even his investment in mining property had 
been more from the desire to have some foothold on 
that splendid mountain range than to make money. 
Adele was right. This was a land of enchantment 
which made a man forget. 

“ Lispenard might know he could have all he wished 
of me,” he said, for he concluded that there was some 
debt. He wondered if there could be a mortgage on 
their shabby adobe home, if the salary from the church 

[ 116 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


were unpaid. He was grateful to think they had asked 
it from him instead of Cozzens. Yet, as he witnessed 
her painful emotion he was indignant with Lispenard 
for getting her to ask for the money for him. All 
that instinct of protection she roused in him fought 
fiercely now against his better judgment. 

“ I don’t want Theodore to know anything about 
it,” she answered. 

“You shall have whatever is in my power to give,” 
he told her. 

“ You may think it too much,” she said timidly. 

“ I don’t think so,” he said, with a faint smile. “ I 
have little enough use for my money as it is.” 

“ Could you let me have as much as five hundred 
dollars.^ ” she asked, still with that pitiful timidity 
which sat so ill on Adele. 

He could have wept. Five hundred dollars, and she 
could have his fortune! “When would you like it.^^ 
I can give it to you now. I have my cheque-book in 
my pocket.” 

“ If you please,” she said, folding up the shirtwaist 
and laying it on top of the basket. 

He followed her into the house, and she cleared a 
space for him on the desk. 

“ Theodore is not very orderly,” she said, with a lit- 
tle smile. “ He leaves his papers scattered all about.” 

He wrote the cheque out and handed it to her si- 
lently. 


[ 117 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


She took it feverishly and thrust it into the front of 
her dress. Then, impulsively, she seized his hand and 
pressed it tight against her in pure gratitude. “ Oh, 
Jarvey, I could trust you so, always, always ! ” 

“ It is nothing, nothing,” he answered. He was ag- 
onised by the scene between them, and rose to go. 

“ Jarvey,” she said, “ you have always been so good 
to me. Since you came I have sometimes thought of 
the past, and ” She hesitated. 

He wished she would spare him that. He could not 
forget that while Lispenard stood between them it 
were better that no mention of that past were made. 
She stood very near him. His pulse still beat to the 
pressure of her fingers on his wrist when, a moment 
since, she had taken his hand and pressed it to her. 
He had a strange reversal of feeling to a scene long 
gone by. He seemed to be standing once more in her 
father’s parlour and receiving his dismissal anew, be- 
cause she loved Lispenard. Her tears, her blushes, 
her appeal, put him at her mercy. The serenity of the 
past weeks was gone — ^that peace of heart when he felt 
that their resumed relationship was innocent as that of 
their childhood. 

“ and that I have marred your life,” she con- 

tinued, “ and I hope you will forgive me.” 

“ Adele,” he said, “ I can’t stand it to have you talk 
that way to me.” 

His grim passion appalled her. For the first time 

[ 118 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHT 

in her life she was afraid of him. She watched him 
go, helpless to detain him. When he reached the gate 
he looked back and raised his hat once more. Some- 
thing had gone out of his smile; it was no longer 
eager. She went into her bedroom and looked at her- 
self in the mirror. Had she lost her charm and at- 
tractiveness But she recalled the frank admiration 
in his eyes when she had been sitting beside him on the 
porch, and knew her fear in that respect was ground- 
less. She could not give up the tribute of his long 
devotion. It had been like balm to her heart, so 
wounded by her husband’s indifference. She saw sud- 
denly, with absolute clearness, that her humiliation at 
asking a favour from him had betrayed her into the 
fatal mistake of asking his pardon for the past. In 
her gratitude for the money, her impulse had been to 
atone for what was long gone by, and she had felt his 
instinctive lack of assent to her words. 

Trent closed the gate with a strange sinking of the 
spirits. The day had lost its glamour; the enchant- 
ment was gone. As he walked by the Santa Ines Mis- 
sion he saw that the rose vine clambering over the yel- 
low wall looked dry and withered in the hot sunshine. 
The light hurt his eyes. Miss Armes passed him on 
her way home from downtown, and he experienced 
afresh the old throb of antagonism as he returned her 
bow. He felt that her grave eyes divined his spiritual 
inquietude. He had his horse saddled, and went 
[ 119 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


for a long ride, taking a new direction to the west. 
He felt that he could have ridden on forever, fol- 
lowing the steadily declining sun. The solitary 
grandeur increased, seeming to absorb him and his 
horse, until he felt that he was the only witness of the 
passing of the day. The breeze blew along the ground, 
raising the sand in tiny swirls. Through all his loy- 
alty to Adele a strain of newborn condemnation beat, 
a persistent pulse that would not lose itself. Her 
vanity had spoken in that reference to the past. It 
was the appeal of the woman who, knowing that she 
still is loved, asks forgiveness of her coquetry. 

Had she really cared anything for him she would 
not have hurt him by speaking of those days. He saw 
more clearly than ever before that she was absorbed in 
her husband and children. Had she become conven- 
tional and uninteresting to him all in a moment ? Her 
words had given him a shock of surprise. He did not 
regard his life as marred. It was full of interests and 
ambitions of which she knew nothing. Her romantic 
vanity had made her overestimate her power. She had 
read more into his moods of loyalty to the old ideal 
than was really there, and her over-statement revealed 
him to himself as nothing else could have done. He 
drew up his horse, that he might sit still to watch the 
majesty of the fast-dropping sun, fiery-red as it ap- 
proached the heated horizon. He had seen it go down 
so over a desolate waste of ocean. He recalled Lispen- 
[ 120 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


ard’s words — “ The conventions one thinks moral 
might well cease.” Had his love for Adele been but a 
convention with him? Was he, too, changing; were 
his convictions, his ideals, shifting like the shifting 
sands that gave to his horse’s feet ? 

The spirit of the desert spoke to him, full of sub- 
limity and melancholy. He wondered if Adele would 
give up the world for the man she loved, and he 
thought not. It was better so, as things were in the 
world, but for himself — rather the passionate heart, 
although it entailed the mistaken judgment. 

He returned late, and dined alone that evening at 
Campi’s. Cozzens was out of town. He did not call 
in the evening as he had been accustomed to do, and 
Lispenard missed him so that later in the evening he 
hunted him up and found him in the balcony at the 
hotel, and spent an hour or so with him. He, too, was 
in a depressed mood, saddened by the death of his old 
parishioner, who had been unwilling to go. 

“ After all his devotion to the Church, he had no 
more confidence than you might have, Jarvey.” 

“ I have no fear, my dear fellow,” Trent answered, 
with one of his infrequent smiles. He laid his hand 
afl[^ectionately on his friend’s knee. “ What do you 
say to getting the boys and your wife and Miss Armes, 
and having some kind of a picnic at Campi’s? Ma- 
dame Campi informed me she had too much ice-cream 
left over from dinner, that the guests to-night all went 

[m] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

to pie. She was much annoyed, for pie will keep over 
and ice-cream won’t. I don’t want to miss any time 
with you all, for I find I shall have to go in a day or 
two. My business demands it.” 

He knew that Adele would be relieved to see him 
after the scene of the afternoon. She met him easily, 
with no consciousness save that of gratitude in her 
manner. Several times during the evening he caught 
her looking at him with such sweetness and affection 
that he felt he had done her an injustice in his 
thought. Her evident trust in him awakened his 
chivalry anew. 

And she was pleased. Her tact had sprung from 
desperation. If he deserted her after his years of 
faithfulness she must indeed have lost her charm. 

He went home after his little party that night and 
wondered what she wished the money for and thought 
of her as of a child who begged money innocently to 
make a gift to someone. He knew her well enough 
to be sure she did not wish it for herself, and it flashed 
into his mind that she had asked for it that she might 
follow his example and make some mining invest- 
ment for the boys. 


[ 122 ] 


CHAPTER IX 


W HEN Mrs. Lispenard found herself and the 
boys on the great Overland train as it 
pulled out of Sahuaro, she realised her dar- 
ing for the first time. She had contrived that her 
departure should be a surprise, and had started before 
the familiar crowd at the depot realised her inten- 
tion. It had been easy to make Tiggy accompany 
her, but Jim was so obstinate that he brought her to 
scolding and tears. She had told him her plans after 
exacting a promise of secrecy, but it was not until 
she threatened to go on alone with his brother that a 
fine feeling of chivalry toward his pretty mother made 
the boy consent to go with them. He felt that 
neither she nor Tiggy was able to look out for the 
other, and he was reassured by her promise to let him 
go directly home if he did not like the place to which 
she was taking him. His moment of parting was there- 
fore made bearable by the anticipation of immediate 
return after they had once touched their destination. 

She herself was buoyed up by excitement. When 
the last call for supper sounded she led them through 
to the dining car. None of them had eaten much for 
tea, which she had served earlier than usual that she 
might leave everything in order. 

[ 123 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

Tiggy played with the dishes the waiter brought 
him. He tasted some of each, but was too happy to 
be hungry. He saw the reflection of the lamps in the 
polished silver and glass. The faces of the deft, white- 
aproned negroes shone as they carried the trays of 
food. It was very puzzling to pick out their own man, 
and he made the mistake of smiling at the wrong one. 
The bread was cut in squares on a silver boat, and 
the steak was on a silver platter, with a big silver 
bowl on top to keep it warm. It was like being in a 
fairy palace. He kept turning his little, well-brushed, 
blond head to see what was going on behind him. 
He smiled at his mother across the table. It was she 
who had brought him to see all this. For once he was 
silent, when he might have talked. 

Luxury had never seemed more desirable to Mrs. 
Lispenard. She could see herself and her two boys in 
the mirror at the end of the car; Tiggy’s dear little 
person, and Jim, unhappy, sullen, but undeniably 
handsome. She wished she might have a portrait 
painted of them all together. There were only two 
men besides themselves left in the dining car, and she 
was conscious that they looked at her with admira- 
tion. She lingered over her black coffee, and peeled 
a peach prettily for Tiggy. She experienced neither 
anxiety nor longing for her husband in this new en- 
vironment. 

She had telegraphed her brother to expect them. 

[ 1 ^ 4 ] 


CHAPTER NINE 

He was a physician in a New England city, and as 
both he and his wife were fond of children she knew 
their nephews would be welcome. There was a fa- 
mous private school for boys near them at which Jim 
could be a day scholar. 

When they returned to their own section the twi- 
light still lingered, and they sat looking from the 
window until it was time to go to sleep. The sky was 
dark, save for a strip of pale gold in the west. Cacti 
whirled by in that gray air, dim, sinister forms with 
crooked arms outthrust as if they would detain her. 
“ The desert looks as if everything had gone to bed. 
Mamma,” said Tiggy. 

She drew him closer. Jim sat opposite them, look- 
ing from the window without speaking. 

“ The two princes have run away from the tower,” 
Tiggy said. He liked to fancy that the picture above 
the fireplace in the living room at home represented 
himself and Jim. 

The great train sped on and on, and yet the desert 
grew no less. Mountain ranges rose to their vision 
and vanished; but always the whirling sands, always 
the threatening cacti ! Mrs. Lispenard’s imagination 
ran riot. She felt that the desert was putting a curse 
upon her in revenge for her defiant hatred of it. The 
gold faded from the horizon line into a pale and 
chilly grey. 

The porter began to make up the berths, and she 

[ 125 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


ordered the boys’ made up first. When they were in 
bed, and she had kissed them good-night and drawn 
the heavy curtains, she went back to the window. It 
was a night of darkness, unrelieved by moon or stars. 
Through the half-open window the air poured in 
warm and dry, the desert air, with the old, old smell 
of the desert in it. Could she never escape it.^^ The 
speed of the train seemed ineffectual, its mad race 
hopeless. It stopped, and she looked out upon the 
typical plaza of a desert town, a duplicate of Sa- 
huaro. She felt that they had described a circle and 
returned to their starting place. 

She arose and went to the boys’ berth. Tiggy 
awoke while she looked at him. 

“What is it, darling ” she asked. “Shall I 
bring you a drink ? ” 

He had his father’s way of smiling an assent with- 
out speaking. When she returned with the water he 
drank it thirstily, and lay down again to instant 
slumber. Jim raised himself on his elbow. “ I can’t 
sleep,” he said moodily. 

He forgot his chivalrous protection of his mother 
in his own need of comfort. She kissed him and 
promised that if he were not happy in the East he 
might return at once. She began to suflPer from a 
strange humiliation, for she felt that the boy was her 
judge. His distress was not entirely due to home- 
sickness, but partly to his conviction that she was do- 
[ 126 ] 


CHAPTER NINE 

ing wrong. He had asked her where she got the 
money for the trip, and she had evaded the question. 
She knew that he had not been satisfied with her ex- 
planation, that his father was not to be told because 
he would oppose their going. Jim knew that the 
mystery lay deeper than that, and was concerned with 
the money for the journey. 

She sat beside him until he slept as quietly as 
Tiggy, then she went to the dressing room to make 
herself comfortable for the night. Her sense of lux- 
ury increased. She was extravagant with the five 
hundred dollars Trent had given her. She could have 
travelled in the tourist car, but had chosen to take a 
Pullman section. The other passengers had long since 
gone to bed, and so she had the dressing room undis- 
turbed. As Tiggy had been delighted with the silver 
and glass in the dining-room car so now she was 
pleased with the mirrors which lined the room; the 
polished nickel basins; the faucets running hot and 
cold water ; the plentiful supply of clean towels. She 
remembered that her own linen towels at home were 
wearing out, but she did not care. She had patched 
and darned them so often that there was little of the 
original fabric left. She took out her hairpins and let 
down her long, thick hair. It fell about her face, and 
white arms, and shoulders, and made her look like a 
girl again. The several mirrors gave her back to her- 
self as though they should say: “ You are still young 

[m] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

and beautiful, the world is before you.” Her thought 
in starting had been only for her children. Now she 
forgot them in the freshness with which her own 
beauty came to her. There was'much of the actress 
in her nature, and she watched her smiling reflection 
grow pensive and her eyes darken tragically. Her 
heart beat high with exultation; youth, for beauty 
was youth, looking back to her from the mirrors, 
flooded her being. Now after fifteen years she was 
going home. Lispenard became but a memory in her 
present mood. She and the boys — they three. 

As she stepped from the dressing room the conduc- 
tor passing through opened an outside door, and the 
air blew in upon her, still the desert air. Her spirit 
shrank within her as she crept into her berth and lay 
there shivering. All her courage had departed, and she 
lay awake until the heavens began to grow less dense. 
Then she turned on her pillow and shut her eyes 
against seeing another dawn brighten over the desert. 

Jarvis Trent had seen Mrs. Lispenard depart with 
her two boys in that general whirl of amazement, and 
had stood staring after the train until it became but 
a speck on the far-narrowing track. Then, anxious to 
escape the comments of the crowd, he turned and 
walked away with a vision of Jim’s tragic young face 
peering out of the moving window. It was not only 
to Lispenard she had said good-bye in so cavalier a 
fashion, but also to him. As he thought of her hus- 
[ 128 ] 


CHAPTER NINE 

band he realised gloomily how shabby his own action 
would now look in having given her the money she had 
asked of him. He was in the pretty position of giv- 
ing a woman money enough to run away from her 
husband and take her children as well. Strangely 
enough he felt no pang just yet at her departure, but 
onlj'^ those waves of anger with her which he used to 
experience during their brief engagement. Adele, 
tender, weeping, unhappy, won his finest chivalry, 
but this calculation of independence on her part 
angered him. He could not admit even to himself 
that his anger was due to the wound she dealt him in 
leaving without the slightest farewell. He felt now 
that he had parted from her twice, but his thoughts 
dwelt persistently on Lispenard, and the position in 
which the man was placed. Adele had failed in his 
ideas of honour as once before when she had played 
fast and loose with them both. At last he went back 
to the town after a long walk, and met Lispenard 
wandering about. 

“ Have you seen my wife.? ” he asked. 

“ Good Lord ! ” said Trent to himself, mentally 
cursing his worldly fortune which had enabled him to 
lend Adele the money. “ I saw her go off on the 
train,” he added aloud. 

“ On the train ! ” Lispenard echoed, and gazed at 
his friend amazed. ‘‘ Why should my wife go with- 
out a word to me.? ” 


[ 129 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

he asked, and sat down suddenly on the steps of the 
depot as if grown weak. 

“ I don’t know,” said Trent. 

Lispenard stared into the plaza without a word, 
and Trent felt that it was due him to tell him all he 
knew, although it was breaking faith with Adele. 
“ She asked me for a loan of five hundred dollars 
about a week ago. Of course I never thought it was 
for this. I thought she wanted it for you and the 
children.” 

His companion raised his head slowly and looked up 
at the balcony with a smile of amusement and con- 
tempt. ‘‘ Haydon is above there listening to us.” He 
called up to him. ‘‘ Come down. I want to speak to 
you.” 

The station-master obeyed. The flickering light of 
the kerosene lamp at the door of the depot showed 
Lispenard’s eyes cold and keen as he looked up at 
him. “ Did you know Mrs. Lispenard was going 
away ? ” 

“ Well, she kind of took me into her confidence,” 
answered Haydon ; “ you see, I was to see her trunk 
went all right. I got it down after dark last night, 
and ” 

“ That will do,” said Lispenard with a gesture as 
though the conversation sickened him. Trent saw that 
he controlled himself with an effort, and forced himself 
to continue the conversation with the man. 

[ 130 ] 


CHAPTER NINE 


“ Keep whatever she told you to yourself. A lady’s 
confidence is sacred,” with an effort at lightness, “ and 
remember that I trust you as one gentleman trusts 
another, Haydon.” He rose slowly. 

He did not seem to see Trent’s proffered hand. 
He held his walking-stick by either end in his own 
hands. 

“ Good-night,” he said, with a nod which included 
both men impartially, and Trent felt as if he had been 
struck. He watched the grey-clad, youthful figure, 
the moonlight falling aslant the white sombrero; he 
caught the poise of the head held high from pride, 
but resting back as if heavy from learning. He was 
doomed to feel again all the old sick, angry resentment 
at Adele’s unfaithfulness, but this time it was for the 
sake of another man, not for himself. 

It was not until he reached his own gate that Lis- 
penard remembered his sons. Well, he would tell them 
that their mother had stolen away on a visit, and they 
must try to be as content as they could with him until 
she came back. At first he could not realise she was 
gone, and he sat down in a house unnaturally 
still. 

The events of the past ten days kept coming back 
to him. Now through the memory of his happiness 
in his wife’s recent newborn content he heard sound- 
ing the note of her departure. He remembered that 
he had not noticed whether the boys had come in yet 
[ 131 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


and gone to bed. He went to their room. The little 
white bed was undisturbed. The pillows stood up 
primly. The shams had not been folded away for 
the night, nor the counterpane turned back. He 
wondered that he could have thought even for a mo^ 
ment that she would have gone without Jim and 
Tiggy. Their absence did not change the situation, 
but only increased the loneliness. He was sure she 
must have left some message for him. 

When he finally found a letter fastened to their pin- 
cushion on the bureau of their room, it seemed so 
typical of the situation that he could not resist smil- 
ing and caught the reflection of his amusement in the 
mirror. Poor little Adele ! All desert life which could 
not conceal itself in the ground, nor feign appear- 
ance of sand or vegetation, must either fly or fight if 
it would exist. And Adele, to whom happiness meant 
existence, could not fight, so she had deceived him and 
run away ! He experienced none of the anger toward 
her which had filled Trent. “ The love of the adven- 
ture of life.” It actuated them all. He read her 
letter as he stood there by the bureau. It was full of 
serene confidence that he would neither judge nor con- 
demn her. 

“ I know you would have talked away my plans, 
dear Theodore,” she wrote, “ and so I did not tell you. 
When I have seen the boys well established with m}^ 
brother, who has always been willing to pay for their 
[ 132 ] 


CHAPTER NINE 

schooling, I will return.” And she had added in a 
postscript : 

“ I do not know that we need feel much indebted to 
Jarvey for the money. After all, it was my father who 
gave him his start in life. But of course it was lovely 
of Jarvey to give it to me.” 

It was so feminine to Lispenard that when she saw 
no way of returning the money she had borrowed, she 
should seek an easy way out of her difficulty. He 
folded the little note and placed it in the drawer of the 
bureau. He would have to find some way to pay Trent 
back. He returned to the living room, where he had 
lighted the lamp, and looked about him. Even the 
light could not make the room seem aught but gloomy. 
Pie thought of the other rooms in the house, yawning 
darkly, and realised his own sensations with interest 
and appreciation. He saw how it was that imagina- 
tive men had summoned ghosts up in deserted houses. 
Already his own abode was acquiring a personality 
that creaked and whispered, 


[ 133 ] 


CHAPTER X 


T rent would gladly have left town the next 
day as he had originally planned, but he was 
too much a man of the world not to fear the 
interpretation his immediate departure might put on 
Mrs. Lispenard’s flight. For the first time he went 
voluntarily and alone to call on Miss Armes, craving 
society other than Haydon’s in his desolate mood. He 
had not seen Lispenard all day, and it was a disheart- 
ening experience to him to pass by the small house 
across the street nestling in the shadow of the old mis- 
sion. Santa Ines was bathed in the light of sunset, and 
he recalled Theodore’s words, that it was like a gra- 
cious presence in Sahuaro. Peace seemed to hover over 
it like the wings of an invisible dove ever ready to 
descend upon that person, who, in passing, paused to 
receive it. And legends, like birds, fluttered about it, 
their charm not to be caught in the printed page; 
legends of the Jesuit fathers and the pious Indians 
who had built the mission with fearful toil and tribu- 
lation. Trent had already heard several of them ; they 
were the folk-lore of the people of Sahuaro. The 
bronze bells continued to hold their music like a very 
old person in whom the spirit remained sweet. Trent 
wondered as he walked on at the purely artistic pleas- 
[ 134 ] 


CHAPTER TEN 


ure to be gained from a building in absolute harmony 
with the landscape. 

He caught no glimpse of Lispenard, although his 
front door was open and he knew he must be within. 
The hurt of last night still lingered, and that experi- 
ence made him feel that he might be misunderstood, 
and his call taken to be either as one of curiosity or 
condolence. To be misunderstood by Theodore! It 
was incredible. He was going to call on Miss Armes, 
driven there by sheer loneliness. He did not find her 
at home. Not even old brown Teresa came to the 
door. Life was informal in Sahuaro, and, if it were 
inconvenient to go to the door, people who called 
walked about the square and came back again. And 
when he rapped this evening the Senora Teresa was up 
in her room telling her rosary. 

Trent retraced his steps to the plaza. The train 
had not yet come in, but the people had already 
gathered in that welcome spot of greenness ; the steam 
was rising through the white cloth which covered the 
hot tamales for sale by the old Mexican woman; two 
young Spaniards strolled about smoking cigarettes; 
on the balcony above the young woman who ran the 
lunch counter stood ready to ring her big brass bell 
for supper. It was all so familiar to him now, so un- 
changed, and yet so absolutely changed since Adele’s de- 
parture. He saw the chair which had been hers unoccu- 
pied, and he went on anxious to escape from the scene. 
[ 136 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


Without the plaza, and just beyond the railroad 
track, sat the row of Indian women, their blankets 
drawn over their heads up to their eyes, and their 
pottery placed in front of them for sale. He was 
about to go on when he was arrested by the upward 
glance of one very old woman, and he remembered 
being told by Haydon that she was famous in her tribe 
for her pottery. It was not the first time her bead- 
bright eyes had arrested his attention, and now it 
dawned upon him that she resented his indifference to 
her art. 

With some amusement and real sympathy, he se- 
lected a vase exquisitely shaped, and paid her. His 
purchase he put behind a bunch of sage until he 
should return from his walk. He struck off straight 
into the desert, taking the trail which led to the 
mountains. 

Far ahead of him he saw Miss Armes. As he 
drew nearer he saw that she was bareheaded ; a 
pale pink shawl was gathered loosely around her 
shoulders, and her trailing skirt brushed an almost in- 
perceptible cloud of sand. He saw her pause to pick 
a cactus blossom. In that vast desert she had the 
air of a lady walking in her own garden. He was 
somehow amazed at her, and she seemed possessed of 
great egotism. 

“ Have you come out to see the sunset? ” he asked. 
“ I have just been to call on you.” 

[ 136 ] 


CHAPTER TEN 

She turned, surprised. “ I thought I was all alone. 
I often come out at this hour.” 

As they walked on he was conscious that it was the 
first time they had ever been alone together, and he 
felt that she was displeased. She was tall, but he 
looked with ease over her fair head ; she was so delicate 
that it made him realise anew his own strength, and 
this made him experience a curious triumph. From 
the beginning of their acquaintance he knew she had 
disliked and defied him. Yet he had but to put out his 
arm and he could keep her there at his will. He looked 
over the wide desert, and he had a strange feeling as if 
he and she had drifted far out to sea. 

They sat down on a shelving rock rising like a 
shoulder out of the sand. Back of them were some tall 
fluted cacti like broken Doric columns, and before them 
stretched the mesquite, silvery-green in the level light 
from the bright horizon. The air was being woven 
into crepe-like veils of pink and blue above the moun- 
tain peaks. 

They heard the shrill scream of the Overland, and 
turned to see it rush like some black monster into the 
landscape, curving to its track and revealing its great 
length ; puffing into the station and shutting out their 
view of the plaza. They saw the engine uncoupled 
and driven off to the big red water-tank, and finally 
taken back. 

Trent watched it depart and fade to a black speck 

[ m] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


in the distance with a feeling of poignant sadness as 
he realised how soon it would bear him away. He had 
been eager to go that morning, but now he was reluc- 
tant, and he was scornful of his own weakness in wish- 
ing to remain sentimentally in a place merely because 
Adele had been there. 

He turned suddenly, startled to find that he had 
so far forgotten the conventionalities of life that he 
had not spoken to Miss Armes for some time. It 
seemed impossible that she should not resent it, and 
yet he had not been unconscious of her presence beside 
him. He glanced down at her serene profile, her hands 
clasped lightly about her knee, and realised that she 
had evidently forgotten him as well. 

Mrs. Lispenard will not reach her destination un- 
til day after to-morrow,” she remarked. 

“ Then you know where she is going,” he said in 
some surprise, wondering if she had seen Lispenard 
since last night. 

“ Oh, I knew,” she answered. 

“ Did she tell you.? ” he asked in an amazement he 
took no pains to conceal. Could she have connived 
with Adele in this impulsive departure? He remem- 
bered the girl’s infatuation for Lispenard, and looked 
at her sternly. 

“ No, indeed,” she told him. “ It was Tiggy. That 
is, the child came to beg me to do something for him 
while he was gone away. He told me his mother 
[ 1B8] 


CHAPTER TEN 


wished him to keep it secret. I knew as well as if I 
had been told where she was going. She has been 
anxious for a long time to put Jim in school.” 

He knew that she must wonder where Mrs. Lispen- 
ard had obtained the money. 

“ Do you see how the sunset shadows are falling to- 
night ” she asked him, and he saw that she wished to 
discontinue the subject. “ Do you see how the top of 
that third mountain is worn into points by the winds 
and sand-storms, and how the front of it is fluted? I 
please myself by thinking it is a great organ, and the 
wind is the musician.” 

“ You love music,” he said, noting her expression. 

“ Have I never played for you?” she rejoined. 
“ Why, you have never been in but one room in my 
house, have you? I have my piano in the parlour, 
where my father’s picture is.” She added after a mo- 
ment, “ He was killed by the Indians.” 

“ So Mr. Lispenard told me,” he said. 

“ Yes,” she said. “ Pie admired my father. If 
it had not been for him I should not have gotten 
over it, ever, I think. They would not tell me 
how bad it was, and I imagined it, which was worse, I 
think. But Mr. Lispenard made me see how my 
father must have been happier to die fighting than to 
die in his bed after a lingering illness had broken 
his spirit. I shall never forget how he insisted that 
his soul must have sprung forth armed with victory 
[ 139 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


from his poor body.” She shivered. ‘‘ They never 
let me see him — afterwards. But I am glad now to 
think that his spirit was never discouraged by a sick- 
ness that would have been unendurable to him.” 

He was impressed anew by her intellectuality. Most 
women would have refused to accept such comfort, he 
thought. 

And Theodore who had given it to her ! He looked 
away. “ You love him,” he said ; “ you love Lispen- 
ard.” He could not have explained why his own heart 
was beating so heavily, and there was a moment of 
darkness to his eyes. His ill-advised speech echoed in 
his own ears and made him ashamed. What right 
had he to accuse this woman and bring her to confu- 
sion? The words had spoken themselves almost with- 
out his will. 

She made no reply. 

He saw her looking straight ahead of her, unal- 
tered, as if she had not heard his brutal words. The 
afterglow, bright as a second sunset, spread over the 
dun desert and turned her ash-coloured hair to gold. 
For one confused moment it seemed to him that the 
air, weaving such magical veils, had woven one about 
her, and that he saw her through an illusion. He had 
expected to look into the face of a woman his unpar- 
donable words had humiliated. He saw a counte- 
nance of touching fairness, too calm to be triumphant. 
He had accused her of loving Lispenard. Now, with 
[ 140 ] 


CHAPTER TEN 


a sinking of his spirit, he read her smile. It was Lis- 
penard who loved her. 

Adele’s words returned to him like a prophecy: 

“ If you learn to like the desert you will like her. 
You cannot see what I mean now, but you will if you 
stay long enough.” A veil was torn from his eyes. 
In her own person she typified the desert, fair to 
those who found her fair, strange to those who found 
her strange. Her beauty was a reflection like that of 
the little indigo chameleon which played over her 
white fingers that day in the shadow of the rock. 
Then her eyes, too, had been deep blue. He looked 
down into them now, and saw them shadowed, of no 
distinct colour, and full of mystery. The sands were 
bright, and her hair was gold in the afterglow. Did 
he not know that in reality those sparkling sands were 
dull and lifeless ; that the soft masses of her hair were 
neither brown nor yellow, but a monotonous ash-tint? 
She cast a spell upon him as the desert had, and forced 
him to admit the strange beauty of them both. A 
fever seized his blood. To Adele he had been all 
tender chivalry, but now he reached out and took hold 
of the hand of the girl beside him as if he would draw 
her nearer. 

She struggled to withdraw her hand from his, and 
he saw that she was frightened. He released her 
gently. He did not know himself. She let her hand 
rest where he had dropped it between them, and he 

[ 141 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

was touched. It was almost acquiescent of her, as if 
she were willing he should take it again. But he 
knew it was only indicative of that extreme gentle- 
ness which he had observed in her from the first. He 
had thought then she showed it only to Lispenard, but 
now he too felt it. His heart throbbed heavily. 

“ You are a strange woman,” he said. “ Why did 
you come out here at this hour.? ” 

“ If I told you you would not believe me,” she said. 
“ Once I told you I had seen Tiggy’s wolf, and you 
laughed at me.” 

He smiled now. She was very clever to turn his 
question off by such a reference. Her air of youth- 
fulness disarmed him, and he was ashamed of his 
cynicism. She was quite composed again, and he 
wondered if it were the quick trustfulness of youth 
which had put her at her ease so soon, or that deep 
maturity which told her that she was mistress of the 
situation. 

But he was wearied guessing the way of women ; he 
was tired and depressed, and he looked away from her 
to the shadows which made the mountain look like a 
mighty organ. He wished, fancifully, that a wind 
might arise and fill those imaginary pipes with music 
in harmony with his mood, wild and fierce and lonel3^ 
He could have laughed with scorn to think Lispenard 
had said the desert breathed peace. With all its evan- 
escent beauty of sunset it had never seemed as hateful 
[ 142 ] 


CHAPTER TEN 


to him as now. His dark head sprinkled with grey was 
massive in that fairy light ; his mouth was set and his 
eyes were gloomy. His feverish unhappiness over 
Adele’s desertion and Lispenard’s coldness made him 
reckless. He looked at his companion and thought 
that she was not all remote and classical, but had great 
sweetness as a woman. He wished he had a wife, young 
and fair and honest. His hand dropped to hers and 
closed over it tightly one brief moment, then he re- 
leased it. Her colour rose bright. 

“ Shall I tell you what I have been watching all the 
time we have been sitting here.^ ” she asked him. 
“ Quick, over there, look ! There, now you see 
him.” 

Had it not moved he could not have distinguished 
that shaggy grey form which slipped along those shin- 
ing sands, following the trail that led to the moun- 
tains. 

She gave vent to a little sigh after the moment’s ex- 
citement of making him see it. “ It is Tiggy’s 
wolf,” she said. 

He saw that the animal trotted unevenly, lunging 
forward, and he recalled her statement that one of its 
fore-paws was gone. 

“ I promised Tiggy I would bring food out to it 
while he was away,” she told him, “ but he wished me 
to keep it a secret.” 

“ I will not mention it,” he said. 

[ 143 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ I miss the children,” she continued, “ and I know 
they will be homesick.” 

“ And do you not miss Mrs. Lispenard.^ ” he asked, 
angry with her as he had been that day on the moun- 
tain when neither she nor Lispenard had mentioned 
Adele’s name nor been regretful of her absence. 

Miss Armes did not look at him, but her manner told 
him he had at last gone too far. She gathered up her 
soft, pale shawl and rose. He walked along in silence 
at her side. The desolation of the desert through that 
sunset veil of beauty was forced upon his soul. And 
that pale averted profile in all its perfection — that, too, 
seemed desolate. He thought of Adele so far away, of 
his life in the East, and these realities of his existence 
seemed to become unsubstantial. The cold profile at 
his side angered him. He remembered that look in 
Lispenard’s eyes — that look of a man inviolably 
wedded to a secret passion. What right had she to be 
scornful of him? 

He put his hand on her shoulder and made her face 
him. “ You shall not turn away from me, too,” he 
cried in a voice he did not recognise as his own. “ Lis- 
penard shall not have everything ! ” 

She slipped from his grasp and ran, wild and deli- 
cate in that strange atmosphere, her pale pink shawl 
falling from her and lying on the yellow sands. He 
stood still, watching her fleeing figure. No longer 
did he wish to follow her. And Adele’s words kept 
[ 144 ] 


CHAPTER TEN 

saying themselves over and over. “ Oh, you will 
think her beautiful if you stay long enough, 
Jarvey.” 

He picked up the shawl and went back to the rock. 
He thought of Adele’s little child bringing out supper 
to the wolf at night, of his strange double separation 
from Adele, for she was no longer with her husband 
and in honour he could not see her. He realised afresh 
the strange fever that was coursing in his blood; a 
pale pink shawl lay across his knee; the fountains 
were stirred within him, and he found himself, a man 
past thirty-five, alone in a desert, his eyes full of 
tears. 

When it was long past darkness he went home. As 
he drew near the plaza he remembered the vase he had 
bought, and looked for it back of the bunch of sage 
near the railroad track. It was gone, and his fingers 
struck instead a hard object wrapped in a bit of paper. 
It was the dollar he had paid the old squaw. He was 
amazed. Had she resented his careless fashion of leav- 
ing his purchase.? Was it possible she valued her work 
for its own sake.? But why should not the fingers that 
fashioned it love it.? He recalled the exquisite shape of 
the vase, that shape which had imprisoned the form of 
beauty since Eve was born. He laughed bitterly. His 
dreams were over. Adele had chosen another ; he could 
still see that other figure fleeing from him, wild and 
delicate in a strange atmosphere, her pale pink shawl 
[ 145 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


slipping from her and lying on the yellow sands ; and 
an old withered crone had taken back the vase of im- 
mortal shape. He flung the money scornfully away, 
and the breeze blew the paper in which it had been 
wrapped back against him. 


[ 146 ] 


CHAPTER XI 


L ISPENARD was obliged to wait until Cozzens 
. should return from the Capital, where he had 
gone on business, before he could repay the sum 
his wife had borrowed. Meanwhile the embarrassment 
between the two men decreased, and he had Trent up to 
supper. He made the tea and put a variety of canned 
goods on the table. 

“ This is the tin-can country, you know,” he said ; 
“ I don’t want you to forget that. I have sometimes 
thought that fences of tin cans would be appropriate 
to mark the border-line of the frontier.” 

He made no mention of his wife and children, and 
his guest wondered if he had yet heard from them. 
One thing was apparent to him, and that was Lispen- 
ard’s real serenity. It was unforced. He could be 
reserved in regard to his wife’s departure, but he could 
not hide from his friend that he was content; and it 
seemed to poor Trent, who would have valued her so, 
that Adele’s sweetness had been wasted on this man. 

Thoughts of a divorce crossed his mind, and he had 
a moment of dizziness at a final possibility of giving to 
her what she had missed of life. Lispenard turned the 
leaf of the book he was reading aloud after their sup- 
per, glancing up with some relative remark as he did 
so. And Trent, as he looked at that face, fine and 
[ 147 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


scholarly, bespeaking such mental vigour, such phys- 
ical delicacy, realised, almost with a sense of hopeless- 
ness, that he, Adele, Miss Armes, and Cozzens would 
all conspire to protect Lispenard against any mistake 
he might make. 

They went down later for the mail. There were 
some business letters for Trent and one letter for Lis- 
penard. He opened it eagerly, and his face paled as 
he glanced down the typewritten lines. 

“ Shall we go.^^ ” he asked. They had gone a square 
before he spoke again. “ Do you remember how am- 
bitious I was ? I think I’m side-tracked. I thought I 
should be a bishop by this time, but the house of 
bishops would like to turn me out of the church as an 
heretic.” 

“ Did you have bad news ? ” Trent asked, confident 
now that the letter could not have come from Adele. 
He drew a deep breath of relief. He would be anxious 
until he heard she had reached her destination. 

“ Yes,” said his companion briefly, “ the publishers 
have refused my book. They are sending it back to 
me.” 

The street-lamp showed them Miss Armes walking 
ahead alone. 

What a solitary woman she is,” said Trent ; “ I do 
not understand her.” His tone was indifferent. He 
had schooled himself to sternness, and the passion and 
fever of the night before seemed like a dream. He had 
[ 148 ] 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


returned her shawl that morning, but had not asked 
to see her when he called. 

“ Solitary ? ” Lispenard repeated ; “ I should not 
call her that. She is very happy. I have sometimes 
thought, though, that happiness sets us a little aloof 
from our fellows. After childhood is done any real 
happiness is so rare that we are apt to hug it to our 
hearts like a precious secret, fearing either the world’s 
enmity or else its condemnation of us as foolish. But 
we are eager to share our sorrows. For instance, I 
could scarcely wait to get out of the post-office in my 
anxiety to tell you my manuscript was rejected.” 

‘‘ And do you mean to imply that you wouldn’t have 
told me had it been accepted,” his friend retorted. 
“ No, Theodore, you cannot make me believe you are 
cynical. You would have been setting up the cigars 
if you’d had good luck.” 

“ I was only talking,” Lispenard answered, with his 
charming smile, as they crossed the street where the 
lamp-post was. “ Like all people who talk much, I must 
say foolish things and often contradict myself. Your 
words always had more weight than mine because you 
talked less. The current of your mind is too strong to 
let you drift in and out along the shore as I do. Miss 
Armes, it isn’t gracious of you to quicken your steps 
when you hear us coming behind you. If you try to 
avoid your spiritual adviser it indicates that you have 
a guilty conscience.” 


[ 149 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

They were quite a way beyond the lamp-post now, 
and her face was barely distinguishable as she turned, 
and Trent felt rather than caught the glance of her 
eyes. It was one of shyness, not of displeasure, and, 
in spite of his stern resolves, his heart bounded. 

‘‘ I forget you are a pastor half the time since you 
don’t wear the dress ordinarily, Theodore,” he said, 
laughing. 

Miss Armes walked on the other side of Lispenard, 
a little in front of him, a slender figure, dim in the 
shadow of the magnolia and pepper trees bordering 
the adobe wall of her garden. But Trent caught the 
poise of her head carried slightly forward on her deli- 
cate throat and turned toward him; he even distin- 
guished the hand which gathered and lifted her skirt 
at the side ; and he caught a scent of roses. 

“ I won’t wear the cloth and be tagged as the pro- 
fessional good man among my fellows,” Lispenard 
answered, but his friend scarcely heard his words. 

They had only a little way to go together, half the 
length of her grounds. A light shone out from the 
rose-arbour as they drew near the gate. 

“ How mysterious ! ” she said, quickening her steps. 

The old Senora Teresa was hunting for something 
with a candle. 

“ What is it, Teresa,” asked her mistress, “ what 
have you lost.? ” 

There was no answer, nor did she look up. 

[ 150 ] 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


“ She does not hear us,” said Miss Armes ; “ she is 
getting very deaf.” 

They lingered, held by the picture Teresa made, 
her grotesque shadow moving up and down on the 
rose vines, her wrinkled brown face distinct in the 
closely held candle. 

“ You may depend upon it, it’s money she’s lost,” 
Trent remarked in a lowered tone, “ or she wouldn’t 
have that look of avidity.” 

“ Old women give me much more of a sensation than 
old men do,” said Lispenard. “ Who was ever scared 
at the thought of a wizard.^ You can’t even get up 
enough interest in one to imagine him riding a broom- 
stick. But you can picture your hag flying along the 
clouds on an evil night. There, she’s found it. No, 
she hasn’t, either. It was something she mistook for 
whatever she’s lost.” 

Miss Armes stood slightly nearer the gate than the 
two men, and her face was distinct to Trent. He felt 
the fascination of last night creeping over him again. 
Had she, indeed, fled from him, and now stood so close 
that he could touch her by putting out his hand ? As 
if she divined his thought, she lifted her eyes and gave 
him a look cold and implacable. 

“ There, she’s found it,” said Lispenard. “ I’m so 
relieved ! I was afraid she wouldn’t.” 

They watched her straighten her back slowly and 
blow out the candle. She did not see her mistress, who 
[ 151 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


stepped back as she came out of the gate, but she 
nearly ran into the two men, and crossing herself and 
mumbling, hurried on. 

“ I don’t suppose she really saw you then, she was 
so absorbed,” Miss Armes said, looking after her, 
“ but instinct made her cross herself. If she hadn’t 
been with me so long I wouldn’t keep her, she is so 
hard to manage, yet only a few years ago she was 
very companionable, and used to sit in the court with 
me afternoons and embroider and tell me of the times 
when she was young. Now she likes to stay alone in 
her own room.” 

“ I remember how interesting she could be, poor 
soul,” said Lispenard. “ I could enjoy her now, if I 
didn’t get so exhausted shouting at her when we 
talk.” 

“ It isn’t old age,” she continued, “ it’s because 
she’s grown miserly, and I fancy she buries her money 
in Santa Ines. It is terrible, I know, but I quite an- 
ticipate telling Jim, when the poor soul is gathered to 
her fathers, that there is hidden treasure in Santa 
Ines. Won’t he have excitement trying to find it ! ” 

They lingered but a moment or two longer, for all 
three had been made self-conscious and constrained 
by Adele’s flight, and then she said good-night and 
went in. 

The two men walked silently across the street, and 
then turned down towards Lispenard’s home. 

[ 152 ] 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 

“ Do you think I’ve side-tracked myself, old fel- 
low? ” he asked again. His tone was pitiful. It was 
the voice of one who could not endure the doubt his 
question implied. 

“ No,” said Trent. His pulses beat triumphantly. 
She could give him that cold, implacable look if she so 
wished, but he had seen her shyness and softness when 
she fancied the deep shadow of the trees veiled her 
from his observation. He drew himself together. Was 
the experience of last night to be repeated? And 
how was he answering his friend? “ I beg your 
pardon, Theodore, I was thinking of something else. 
You’re right. You are side-tracked here. Why don’t 
you leave it all ? Adele would be happier.” 

It was the first time her name had been mentioned 
between them, but now it was done so naturally and 
simply as to engender no embarrassment. It stilled 
Trent’s pulses ; it steadied him. The one moment of 
disillusion when she spoke of having marred his life, 
and he, in his own conceit, had condemned her vanity, 
was past, absorbed in his loyal affection for her. How- 
ever another woman might fascinate him, it was she 
whom he loved, Adele, the little girl he had known in 
his boyhood; the girl who had given him the purest 
happiness of his life, brief though that happiness 
was; the woman who had sweetened his faith in hu- 
manity by being an ideal wife and mother. His irri- 
tation with her was gone, and he saw that her folly in 
[ 153 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


running away from her husband was due to excess of 
love in which the mother triumphed over the wife. 

“ Adele would be happier,” he repeated. 

Lispenard shivered as if struck with sudden cold, 
and made no reply. He would not leave the desert. 
Trent knew that. But it was not that alone which 
held him. 

“ Theodore, it was never our habit to say much to 
each other, but this time I’m going to. You’re right. 
You’re side-tracked out here. It’s time for you to 
break away. I know you love the life, but it’s time for 
you to go. I don’t care what passion a man cherishes. 
If it interferes with his career, if it checks his 
ambition, it becomes the canker which ruins his 
life.” 

“ I wonder why you never married,” said Lispen- 
ard. “You would have been happy with an intel- 
lectual woman. She would have understood your am- 
bition.” 

“ I abhor an intellectual woman,” he retorted. 

Lispenard frowned wearily. “ Why make a ques- 
tion of sex? It is stupid of you.” They had reached 
his door, and he unlocked it, hesitating a moment be- 
fore entering. “ How dark it looks ! ” 

Trent insisted upon hearing some of his friend’s 
writings, and Lispenard recovered his spirits in the 
warmth of the other’s interest, which threw him into 
his most delightful mood. The ideals of their youth 
[ 154 ] 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


flowered again out of those closely written pages. 
He became touchingly happy. 

“ You’ve no idea, Jarvey, how I’ve longed for a 
man’s judgment. A woman’s may be full as intel- 
lectual, but she is apt to be biassed by her liking, I 
think. Don’t you know I was never very fond of 
women’s society as such, and since I’ve been in the 
ministry I’ve been suffocated by a lot of petticoats.” 

He would not let his friend return to the plaza that 
night, but kept him with him. “ You can have the 
boys’ room, and I will have breakfast whenever you 
like. It will be like our college days.” 

Trent saw that he did not wish to be alone. The 
man was sensitive, very delicate, and more dependent 
upon love than he knew. Like most people of great 
charm of personality he did not realise what he re- 
ceived. 


[ 166 ] 


CHAPTER XII 


A fter breakfast the next morning Trent went 
back to the depot to write some letters, and his 
host accompanied him part of the way to the 
plaza. At the bank building he left him. The open 
windows above showed him that Cozzens had returned. 
He found him at his desk in his shirt-sleeves, a big 
black cigar in his mouth, and his hat on the back of 
his head. He was dictating a letter to his stenog- 
rapher. 

“ Any hurry ? ” he asked. 

‘‘ None at all,” Lispenard answered, aS' he seated 
himself at the window. The little town was charm- 
ing, so bright-hued, so gay. Never had it seemed 
more attractive nor his own mood one of greater tran- 
quillity. Trent’s sympathy and admiration for his 
book had been encouraging, and he was able to accept 
cheerfully the fact that he must send it out again. 
His only impatience was due to the time it took to 
send a manuscript back and forth across the continent. 
Life seemed so full of interest and incident that he was 
indifferent to his wife’s absence. With a woman’s 
greater power of agonising over small things, she had 
probably felt the spiritual need of separation from 
him for a time. He did not take seriously her state- 
[ 156 ] 


CHAPTER TWELVE 

ment that she was going for the sake of the two boys. 
He thought it was because he had become oppressive 
to her, and he accepted this belief impersonally and 
was not wounded. It was not in her nature to com- 
bat him, and so she had fled; that was the only refuge 
her nature offered. His keenest emotion had been his 
mortification when he discovered she had asked his 
friend for the money to go. The interest excited by 
her sudden departure had already died away. Sa- 
huaro accepted easily his statement that she had gone 
East on a visit to her brother, and had some thought of 
putting the boys in school. It was a proverb in West- 
ern life that men could live down homesickness, but that 
women never could, and must be allowed to go back 
East occasionally if it could be afforded. Mrs. Lispen- 
ard was a brave woman to have remained as long as she 
had. The Woman’s Auxiliary of her husband’s 
church was a little oflTended that she had not allowed a 
farewell party in her honour, and curious as to where 
the money had come from, but had finally settled down 
to the opinion that her brother must have sent it. 
And as regarded her going so suddenly, had she not 
told Haydon that if she had allowed herself to say 
good-bye to anyone her courage would have failed her, 
and she never could have started ? They gathered, too, 
that it was for this reason she had not wished her 
husband to see her off on the train. He was relieved 
to think there had been no gossip, and now he dis- 
[ 157 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


missed the subject from his mind with a sigh of relief, 
and took up the small morning paper. 

Cozzens finished the letter he was dictating. 

‘‘ Vamose, you,” he told the stenographer, and the 
young man hurried into the outside office, and closed 
the door between. 

Cozzens listened to what Lispenard told him, his 
eyes narrowing like a cat’s, his left hand jingling 
nervously the loose coin in his trousers pocket. When 
he finished he brought his fist down heavily on the 
desk. 

“ So your wife’s left you,” he said. 

“ Temporarily, temporarily,” Lispenard modified, 
amused at his own words, which echoed in his ears like 
“ gently, gently ” on a Sunday-school card. 

“ The damned scoundrel ! ” cried Cozzens. 

“ My dear fellow, don’t blame Trent. I know per- 
fectly well that Mrs. Lispenard talked him into doing 
as she said. Why, he was once in love with her. Make 
some allowance for the tender passion, and that the 
memory of it might engender some feeling of gal- 
lantry. He and you are my best friends, but I’ve no 
wish to be indebted to him for money loaned my wife, 
and so I’ve come to see if you can help me out. I want 
you to take that paid-up insurance of mine. The 
policy is good for seven hundred dollars. I’ll make it 
over to you for five hundred dollars in cash. It will 
be security if I shouldn’t be able to pay you back, and 
[ 158 ] 


CHAPTER TWELVE 

the two hundred dollars would be the interest.” He 
leant forward in his chair, and put his hand on his 
friend’s big shoulder. “ Joking aside, you’ll do me 
this favour, won’t you? I shan’t know where to turn 
if you don’t. And I wouldn’t ask Mrs. Lispenard’s 
, brother for a cent, the confounded saving prig ! ” 

Cozzens dipped his pen in the ink-well, and wrote 
out a cheque on orange-coloured paper and laid it one 
side to dry. 

Lispenard drew the policy from his shabby grey 
coat and made it over to Cozzens. “ We shall have to 
have witnesses,” he insisted, smiling. ‘‘ I’ve always 
been longing to convince you that a clergyman can 
have a sense of business.” 

Cozzens called in his stenographer, and when the 
young fellow had signed and gone out again, he said, 
“ This leaves your wife without anything in case you 
die.” 

“ How sharp are the wounds of a friend,” his com- 
panion retorted ; “ you forget I may have a whole sil- 
ver mine in my book.” 

Cozzens put on his coat and settled his hat square 
on his head. Then he picked up the cheque. “ You 
stay here,” he said briefly. “ I’ll just take this here to 
him. Don’t worry. I’ll get his receipt in full or know 
the reason why.” 

“ Good Heavens ! ” cried Lispenard, springing to 
his feet. “ Come back here. You can’t insult my 
[ 159 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

friend. Why, he’s just passed the night with me. 
Give me that cheque. I’ll take it over myself.” 

The big fellow demurred, but it ended in Lispenard 
having his way. 

“ However you put it,” Cozzens insisted obsti- 
nately, “ it looks just one way to me, and that’s dirty. 
I call it a regular Greaser trick for a man to give a 
woman money to run away from her husband and chil- 
dren.” 

“ She took them with her,” Lispenard explained. 

“ Hey ! ” he cried, his eyes bulging. 

“ She has some idea of putting them in school near 
their uncle,” the other continued. 

“ I guess she aint calculating much on the educa- 
tion you and I had laid out to give them,” Cozzens 
said huskily, with a faint smile ; his fierceness was gone. 

“ I think not,” his friend answered, amused to think 
how little his wife respected his intellectual judgment 
in regard to their sons. He took up the slip of glossy 
orange paper bearing the sprawling signature of the 
great mine owner, and went away. 

Cozzens squared his chair around and watched 
through the window for Lispenard to emerge from the 
stairway below. His eyes followed that almost boyish 
figure until it disappeared in the green of the plaza. 
He reached back in his hip-pocket and drew out a 
whiskey-flask. His full, hard eyes were misty. 

“ I’d even taught Jim to take a nippy now and 

[ 160 ] 


CHAPTER TWELVE 

then,” he muttered. “ Let a boy know the taste when 
he’s young and he’ll never go crazy for it when he 
grows up.” He put the flask to his lips and then 
turned back to his work. Now and then a heavy sigh 
shook his powerful shoulders as he went over his ac- 
counts. On the desk was a piece of gold quartz he had 
brought home for Jim and an Indian toy for Tiggy. 

Trent had finished his letters, and was sitting 
leisurely on the balcony, looking out over the desert, 
which like the sea was forever changing. He was em- 
barrassed when his friend brought up the cheque. 

“ Another time would have been just as convenient 
to me.” 

“ That’s all right,” answered Lispenard ; “ don’t 
speak of it. I appreciate your goodness in giving it 
to Adele. Women are more innocent even than minis- 
ters when it comes to the propriety of money matters. 
The air is full of dust to-day. We ought to have a 
magnificent sunset. I am apt to forget the time in 
between. It often seems all dawn and evening to me 
here.” 

Trent smiled in sympathy as he opened his leather 
pocket case to lay the cheque within. As he did so he 
noticed the signature, and was wounded beyond meas- 
ure, as he was not even when his friend had refused to 
see his extended hand the night his wife went away. 
That was due to the strain and humiliation of her un- 
explained departure, but this was deliberate. Lispen- 
[ 161 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 




ard preferred to be indebted to Cozzens rather than 
to himself. This incident took all pleasure from his 
day. He had planned to spend one more evening in 
Sahuaro. Now, he decided to go that night and not 
wait for the morning train. 

Lispenard felt the change in him, and was at a loss 
to account for it. The need of explaining Cozzens’s 
signature to the cheque never crossed his mind. The 
quicker he was done with any money matter, the better 
he was pleased. He saw that his friend’s eyes had 
grown cold and his manner haughty, and ransacked 
his memory as to any probable cause. Finally he at- 
tributed it to sheer moodiness, and remembered that 
there had always been a dour streak in Trent’s 
make-up. He tried in vain to persuade him to remain 
a few days longer, and, when he could not, gave up 
further urging with entire sweetness and made up 
his mind to enjoy that last day to the full. He re- 
mained to lunch with him and stayed in his room while 
he packed. At four o’clock he proposed that Trent 
should call on Miss Armes and bid her farewell. 

He complied without the least emotion. His only 
feeling was one of weariness and anxiety to leave 
Sahuaro as soon as he could. Lispenard’s action in 
regard to the money was fatal to their friendship. 
He felt that he could never get over it. He would not 
have believed before this incident occurred that Lispen- 
ard could be so little sensitive to his friend’s feelings. 

[ 162 ] 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


The desert had estranged him indeed, and he under- 
stood as he had not before why Adele had gone away. 

They found Miss Armes at home. The front door 
was open, and they heard her playing Handel’s Largo 
at the piano in the parlour. She turned her head 
over her shoulder, her fingers on the keys. Then she 
rose and went to meet them. “ I thought I heard 
someone.” 

“ Don’t stop,” said Trent ; “ I wish you would play 
again for me.” 

He remembered afterward that it was the first re- 
quest he made of her, and that she had acceded to it. 

Lispenard, who cared nothing for music, wandered 
about the room, and finally found a book that he liked 
and sat down at the window. 

The music sublimated Trent’s melancholy mood; 
the soft notes fell gently on his bruised spirit. His 
feeling toward Lispenard did not alter, nor was he less 
sad, but his w^eariness passed and left him serene. He 
was not surprised by the girl’s exquisite touch, but con- 
scious only that she played on as though her mood 
that afternoon were all music. He had never been in 
this particular room before. The curtains were drawn 
against the blazing sunshine, save where Lispenard 
had seated himself, and there a dusty golden beam 
slipped in across his white hands and the book he held 
and lost itself in a revelation of the subdued colours in 
the ruff on the floor. The bowl of roses on the piano 

[ 163 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

made the air fragrant, and Trent observed that they 
were placed just below the portrait of Major Armes 
which hung on the wall above the piano. The person- 
ality of the portrait dominated the room. The fierce 
eyes met his own ; the uniform was worn with con- 
scious pride; the set of the grey head was indescrib- 
ably haughty. “ A spirit armed and victorious ! ” 
What a genius Lispenard possessed in his ability to 
says always the appropriate and beautiful thing ! It 
seemed impossible that this bronzed old war-eagle 
could have had a daughter as gentle, as white as the 
girl who sat now at the piano. The intellectuality of 
her perfect profile deprived it of that delicately sen- 
suous beauty which was Adele’s. His warmth of feel- 
ing for her was gone. His mood of triumph, his al- 
most boyish desire to make her speak to him when he 
and Lispenard had overtaken her on their way home 
from the post-office, now seemed foolish to him. Her 
fingers lingered on the keys, the last notes died away, 
and she turned slowly around. 

Lispenard closed his book. “ Oh, music,” he 
quoted, “ ‘ thou speakest to me of things which never 
were and never shall be.’ ” 

“ What a fraud you are ! ” she said ; “ you know you 
don’t know one note from another.” 

“ Leave me my harmless vanity,” he retorted ; “ I 
wish to make a favourable appearance in this musical 
atmosphere. If I cannot hear music I can at least 
[ 164 ] 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


talk it. I think that poetry speaks to me as music 
does to both of you. I say over and over to myself 
such a line as ‘ Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet 
bird sang,’ with an emotion very different from any 
pleasure in the meaning of the words.” 

Trent rose. “ I came to say good-bye, Miss Armes. 
I am leaving on this evening’s train.” 

“ I can’t find the other volume of this book,” said 
Lispenard, who was searching for it on the table, and 
did not observe that his friend had risen to go. 

“ It is in the library,” she answered. 

“ I think I’ll just go out and get it,” he said. 
“ There’s never any time like the present for reading 
a good book.” 

Miss Armes and Trent were left alone. 

“You are going sooner than you expected to, are 
you not.? ” she asked. 

“ I had to make the wrench some time,” he said. 
“ Sahuaro is setting a spell on me. I am sorry to go.” 
He regarded her with his infrequent smile. He was 
grateful for her music and her magnanimity. In 
the presence of that fierce father on the wall whose 
bright, splendid eyes met his from out the painted 
canvas as though they were living, he felt that his 
words on the desert to her the other evening were un- 
pardonable. 

“ Good-bye,” he said. Her hand lay lightly in his 
a second, then his own fingers closed tightly over hers 
[ 165 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


and there was a moment of strangeness in which the 
room seemed to be charged with an emotion he could 
not comprehend, but which enveloped them both like 
an atmosphere. Lispenard’s returning steps were 
heard in the hall, and the girl, still with her hand in 
Trent’s, turned her face toward the door with such an 
expression of wistful longing that he never forgot it, 
for it showed him that she loved his friend. Their 
hands fell apart. He had a moment of pain, of hun- 
ger for that hour alone in the desert when she sat 
beside him and his hand had closed over her unresisting 
one. Oh, could he but hold her so from Lispenard! 
His jealous gaze saw her colour rise, her lashes flutter 
as his friend entered the room, and he turned from 
her with sudden aversion. She was a sorceress as the 
desert was a sorceress; all sweet invitation, all with- 
drawal ; a mirage that beckoned and vanished ! 

“ I found it,” said Lispenard. “ What, going so 
soon, Trent.? ” 

“It is nearly five o’clock,” he answered. 

Miss Armes went with them to the door. Trent as 
he closed the gate looked back and saw her the length 
of the rose-arbour from him, framed in the quaint 
arch of the adobe portico. 

“ Good-bye,” he said again, raising his hat. She 
neither smiled nor bowed, and he went away with the 
feeling that her grave eyes still followed him. This 
final reserve showed him that she was still implacable. 

[ 166 ] 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


Her magnanimity had after all been only another 
expression of her unfailing courtesy. He was glad to 
get away. 

He and Lispenard had supper together at Campi’s. 
Cozzens was there and dined alone. When he went out 
he nodded to Lispenard and gave Trent a stare meant 
to be insolent. Trent could have killed him, but he 
continued his conversation as though the incident had 
not occurred. At the close of the dinner the waiter 
brought a tray on which were two cigars and tiny 
glasses of fiery liqueur. 

“ With the compliments of Madame Campi,” he 
informed them. 

Haydon had spread the news of his guest’s depar- 
ture. 

Trent was touched by the attention. He lighted 
his cigar, and found it excellent. It was Madame 
Campi’s best. The two men sat nearly half an hour 
smoking and talking on impersonal matters, as if their 
visit were before them and not nearly past. When 
they finally went out Trent stopped to thank Madame 
Campi. He rather liked the hard-featured, handsome 
woman, with her showy jewelry and unending crochet- 
ing. She gave him a plump hand to shake. 

So, you will come back.^ ” she said. It was the 
longest sentence he had ever heard her utter. 

The sunset, as Lispenard had prophesied from the 
dust in the air that morning, was beautiful. They 
[ 167 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

watched it from the plaza. The frequenters of the 
depot began to collect, and it finally dawned upon 
Trent that the added excitement in the air was due 
to his departure. People with whom he had exchanged 
but a nod twice daily shook hands with him and told 
him to come back. He realised that they were sorry to 
see him go. Sahuaro was fond of him. He had been 
generous in his admiration, and they saw he was re- 
luctant to leave, and knew he had enjoyed himself. 
That was the fact which had won them. They liked 
to see newcomers enjoy themselves. It was the finest 
tribute that could be paid their town. His figure, which 
a few weeks had made so familiar in the streets, would 
be missed. Hay don had told that he was a judge, and 
they liked to think he was a distinguished Easterner. 
A young Mexican with whom he had some slight ac- 
quaintance pressed a box of cigarettes upon him, and 
the station-master gave him the best of his paper- 
backed novels to read on the train. 

Finally it was all over, and he found himself on the 
rear platform of the last car, as the great Overland 
pulled out of the station. The telegraph operator’s 
girl was waving her handkerchief to him, and he smiled 
back at her, holding his hat in his hand, and conscious 
of a choking sensation in his throat. The last person 
he saw was Lispenard standing on the platform, for- 
getful of the vanishing train, his face turned toward 
the dying light on the desert. 

[ 168 ] 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


It was with a lift of spirits so strong as to be relief 
that he bought the new number of his favourite maga- 
zine and went into the reading room. He was going 
directly home. He had spent all his time in Sahuaro, 
and must give up the trip further west. But he would 
be glad to get back and resume his work again. He 
did not regret the last few weeks, but he was thankful 
they were over. He turned over the pages of the mag- 
azine, and found a paper written by a friend of his, 
a man who had made himself an authority in the law. 
His keen ambition, his sense of rivalry, infinitely re- 
moved in his self-respecting nature from anything like 
jealousy, was roused, and he read the article through 
carefully. It was not until he finished it that he looked 
out of the window and was brought back to a con- 
sciousness of the desert. A band of orange still held 
in the west. The evening was calm, there was no wind 
blowing, and the desert was quiet in a desolation which 
was never peace. Mountains rose and faded away. 
Cacti fied backwards, but always with their crooked 
arms stretched forward as they retreated. He had the 
same sinister impression of them as Adele had when 
she took her little sons and went away. 


[ 169 ] 


CHAPTER XIII 


L ISPENARD, as he tore the leaf from his desk- 
calendar, was surprised to realise that his wife 
had been gone nearly a month. He had received 
a letter written immediately upon her arrival in the 
New England town in which her brother lived, and 
where she would remain until she had placed Jim and 
Tiggy in school. The boys would be day -pupils, and 
make their home with their uncle, who was willing to 
bear all expenses for the pleasure of having them with 
him. Meanwhile, she might stay on several months, 
unless her husband needed her. He answered at 
once, urging her to stay until she was really ready to 
come back, and letting her know, as delicately as pos- 
sible, that he had paid back the five hundred dollars 
to Trent. He did not wish to mortify her by any un- 
due reference to the matter, but he thought she would 
be relieved to know they were not indebted to his 
friend. He concluded the letter with all the current 
news, and told her that he would send her the Sahuaro 
Courant daily. He enclosed the cheque for his month’s 
salary, begging her to use it for herself, and not to be 
concerned for him, as he had been well paid for his 
article on the desert flora. It was not until after he 
mailed the letter that he remembered he had for- 
[ 170 ] 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


gotten to mention the boys once in it, and he was sorry 
for the omission, knowing it would hurt her. After 
the first chill of being alone in the house wore away he 
enjoyed an almost hermit-like existence. He sent 
his book on its rounds again, and he put all his ener- 
gies into the writing of a second one he had long 
planned. The magazine which accepted his arti- 
cle on the flora ordered another paper from him, and 
this second cheque he invested in some books he had 
long wanted. When he undid the wrappings from 
them on their arrival he experienced a delightful sense 
of wickedness at the thought of Adele, that most prac- 
tical, if wholly charming, wife. She had taken five 
hundred dollars and gone away on a good time. 
Should he not take his twenty-five that he had earned 
extra, and expend it in books, if he so wished.^ Let 
her scold him if she dare, after her own extravagance ! 
It was surprising to find out on how little he could 
live. The house belonged to the church, and he had 
no rent to pay ; his wardrobe was presentable, and he 
took but two meals a day, getting his own breakfast 
and having dinner at Campi’s. He worked steadily all 
day, and did not go out until after five o’clock in the 
afternoon. He had never been happier nor felt in 
better health. It was his theory that a man who had 
learned the power of concentration did not get ex- 
hausted easily, and he, in fact, was never conscious of 
being mentally tired. As some women, even in illness, 
[ 171 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


never lose a certain bloom of colour, so his mind re- 
tained always a vital freshness, although his fingers 
might grow stiff and his back ache from the long 
hours spent at his desk. His church duties were few, 
and the services had long ago become such a routine 
to him that they were little responsibility. Except on 
Sunday he thus saw little of people. When Cozzens 
was in town they spent their evenings together, gen- 
erally going on long walks. He showed a tact and 
worldliness scarcely to be expected in him in regard 
to Miss Armes, for he was prone to unconventionality. 
If they met on the street it was by chance, and he 
never went to call on her unless others were to be there. 

The season was unusually hot and the desert looked 
bleached so that its white sands raised by the wdnd 
resembled a line of breakers in the distance; and the 
shadows seemed blacker by contrast and the moonlight 
almost greenish. The spring had passed with March ; 
the several invalids who had swelled his congregation 
went away; during the middle of the day Sahuaro 
slept beneath its red-tiled roofs. But it was never so hot 
that he could not work, and he found the dry air stim- 
ulating, even exciting, with the prospect of recreation 
in the evening : the dinner at Campi’s, with its pint of 
claret served without extra charge, the stroll in the 
plaza afterwards, and an exchange of remarks on the 
heat with Hay don, and sometimes a call on Miss 
Armes. She kept open house these hot evenings, and 

[m] 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

received her callers in her stiff, picturesque garden, 
with its palms and magnolia and fig trees, and oranges 
ripening like gold balls in the warm dusk. There 
was the fountain, the splash of whose spray into 
the basin was sweeter than music in that desert 
country. It was here that her father used to 
walk up and down, up and down, on such evenings. 
Now she dragged out the old Senora Teresa, and 
made her wear her best black silk and lace mantle, and 
sit on the veranda the whole long evening — a deaf and 
most unwilling duenna. When Mrs. Lispenard was 
home she had not been needed, for Miss Armes never 
entertained nor had a caller without her friend. In 
spite of Adele’s jealousy, the two women had been in- 
separable for years. There gathered about her several 
Spanish-Americans, of good family, young men of 
much polish and slight education, vicious as they were 
romantic, with an eye to her fortune beneath their gal- 
lantry. Lispenard began to remain away when he 
might have gone. Their frivolity wore on his nerves 
after his first philosophical resolve to understand 
them. He wondered that she could endure their shal- 
lowness. Cozzens growled and grumbled and scolded 
her to no avail, and established his substantial person 
on her veranda the evenings he was in town, and re- 
mained until all the other callers had departed. The 
fact that he had wished to marry ^ her for years gave 
him a proprietary feeling in her, although she persist- 
[ 173 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

ently refused his suit. At last the suspicion crossed 
Lispenard’s puzzled mind that she gathered these 
shallow young men about her to protect herself against 
him. The thought that she could think him so lacking 
in tact stung him. Contemptuous as he was of money, 
he thought he enjoyed in her eyes the reputation of a 
worldly man. He would be the last person to seek her 
in his wife’s absence. This reflection disquieted him. 
It flung him into a kind of fever, and made him long 
to re-establish himself in her opinion. It effected his 
work, so that it became of uneven quality. He was 
thinking of all this late one afternoon, as he sat on his 
doorstep in the shade of Santa Ines, his hat on, his 
cane in his hand, preparatory to meeting Cozzens at 
Campi’s. He wished he might see her once more in 
the old way, and for the first time he was impatient 
with Adele. Her going had closed the only doorway 
which he wished to enter, and deprived him of that 
intellectual sympathy on which he had so long de- 
pended. 

The sunlight fell like gold on the crumbling yellow 
wall of Santa Ines. The vines Mrs. Lispenard had 
planted were withered for lack of water. As he sat 
looking at them, thinking he might have watered them 
himself. Miss Armes came into the range of his vision 
as she passed the corner of the old mission. She 
stopped at his gate. 

“ Don’t get up,” she said. “ I am not coming in. 

[ 174 ] 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


I only wanted to tell you I had a letter from Tiggy 
last night. It was very cunning. I have it here for 
you. Don’t forget to give it back to me. I think he 
must be studying geography, for he addressed the let- 
ter to me as Yucatan Armes. He has probably con- 
vinced himself that my being named after the yucca 
is all nonsense, and that he has discovered my proper 
name.” 

“ I don’t doubt it,” he answered, joining her at the 
gate. “ He must think Yucca is a nickname, much 
as his own is. I’ve never been able to see how Mrs. Lis- 
penard evolved Tiggy out of Theodore, although I’ve 
twisted my tongue a dozen different ways trying to 
see. It is a triumph of maternal love, I think, don’t 
you.f^ ” 

“ I think she had better come home,” she said ; “ she 
took all our good times with her. I’ve been going to 
the church sewing society religiously lately, and 
you’ve no idea how they all miss her.” 

She lingered at the gate, rested, and freshly dressed 
from her siesta. A breeze, cooler than they had known 
for some days, was rising as the day declined. It 
stirred her hair and blew pleasantly on his face. 

“ I had a letter from Trent,” he said ; “ he wished to 
be remembered to you. He would have written sooner, 
but he was very busy.” 

“ Why does Mr. Cozzens dislike him so } ” she 
asked. 


[ 175 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ Cozzens is apt to hold to violent prejudices as 
though they were the moral law with him,” he an- 
swered. “ Jarvis Trent is my best friend. I wish you 
could come in a moment and see some new books I 
have, but I will bring them over this evening if you 
are to be home. My conscience is burdened with the 
whole of the ‘ Arabian Nights.’ You’ve no idea how 
guilty I feel. I foresee that, like Scheherezade, I am 
doomed to spend a few wakeful nights myself trying 
to invent some excuse to make to Mrs. Lispenard. I 
lay it all to the pernicious habit of reading publishers’ 
catalogues. If I hadn’t read the descriptions of this 
sumptuous edition I never would have bought it, for 
I didn’t need it.” 

“ I think that I shall have to write to Mrs. Lispen- 
ard,” she said mischievously. “ Oh, dear, I wish I could 
see her ! Men never understand how it is that women 
depend so much on each other, do they ? ” 

She looked away from him down the vista of the 
little street to where the far-off mountains rose mag- 
nificently as though to vie in splendour with the 
heated sunset. 

It seemed to him, watching, that a shade was on her 
face, too wistful to be occasioned by the sentiment of 
her last remark. For several years his association with 
her had come to be the delicate delight of his intellec- 
tual life. Adele’s going had severed this companion- 
ship, and he was saddened now by an instinctive feeling 
[ 176 ] 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

that it would never be re-established. In his depression 
he could not imagine that Adele would really return, 
and all would be as it once had been. 

The shadow passed from her face as he watched 
her, and he thought the expression that followed gave 
her beauty a look of immortality. So might a soul 
translated look, he fancied. She turned her gaze back 
to him, and it seemed to him that he read in her clear 
eyes both acceptance and regret of the situation which 
did not permit them to see each other freely. 

She gathered up her trailing skirts to go. “ If you 
will bring me over the ‘ Arabian Nights ’ to look at I 
will give you in return a bundle of papers and maga- 
zines. Come early, won’t you.? There are several 
coming, and we may have quite a party.” 

“ I hope you have marked the articles you liked 
best, since we may no longer read them aloud to- 
gether,” he said. 

She glanced back over her shoulder. “ Do I need to 
mark them? ” she asked, smiling. 

He laughed. The coquetry of the remark was more 
like Adele than herself. She was right. They both 
missed Adele — child and woman both! He stood at 
his gate, watching her until she crossed the street and 
entered her own home, then went out himself, stepping 
in the opposite direction, swinging his walking-stick 
exultantly. The evening promised well. After din- 
ner he and Cozzens would walk up to have their cigars 
[ 177 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


in her garden, and on his return home he would look 
over the papers and magazines she had laid aside for 
him. How well he knew what she would approve of, 
what she would discriminate against ! 

He stopped at the post-office in the rear of the 
drug-store to mail a letter to his wife in which he had 
made delightful confession of the “ Arabian Nights,” 
and then turned his steps toward Campi’s. 

As he reached the double screen doors he remem- 
bered how Trent had been delighted with the old- 
fashioned arctic and tropical scenes painted on either 
door. The room was fairly well filled. Cozzens was 
already there, and pounding on the table for “ more 
juice.” 

Lispenard laughed, and took the seat opposite him 
at the small table. He broke off the crusty end of the 
loaf of French bread, and ate it slowly with a tumbler 
of claret from his pint pitcher. He was tired. Din- 
ner was welcome, and Cozzens’s buoyant physical pres- 
ence a relief, but he missed Trent. It had been a rare 
treat to have a cultivated man for a companion once 
more. 

Cozzens swallowed his food rapidly, and talked be- 
tween courses in his husky, velvety voice. He had been 
having trouble at the mines with the men, and had 
settled the uprising himself without any advice from 
his overseers. He emphasised by gestures the scenes 
through which he had gone. When he spoke of his 
[ 178 ] 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

foremen he brought his fist down on the table, and 
damned them outright for their presumption in think- 
ing to reason with him. 

Lispenard laughed. He recalled scenes when 
he himself had attempted to argue with his com- 
panion. “ I think they were more rash than presump- 
tuous,” he said. He knew the great mine owner was 
ugly with his men, and drove them. But every at- 
tempt on his part to make Cozzens see how hard he was 
had been futile. He only succeeded in wounding him, 
for to differ from him on a matter in which he was an 
authority was treachery to his way of thinking. Did 
he not take unquestioningly the word of his friend on 
religious subjects, and was he not willing to fight to 
the death to prove Lispenard was right ? This trouble 
had been delightful to him, and whetted his taste for 
more. The days had been growing tame. His full 
eyes narrowed ; his jaw squared. He took for granted 
that his friend’s courtesy implied his sympathy, and 
he continued talking on the subject as he mixed the 
lettuce salad for them both and flung in plentiful 
dashes of red pepper. Cozzens’s salads invariably 
brought tears to all eyes but his own. 

To their left, on the other side of the room, Lispen- 
ard observed a group of three Mexicans. He faced 
them while the back of his companion was toward 
them. It was some time since the three had finished 
dinner, but they lingered over their black coffee, 
[ 179 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


smoking cigarettes. One of them was a young 
woman. After a little he saw that the men’s muttered 
remarks, and the girl’s pert tosses of her black head, 
were directed toward his companion. Cozzens, turn- 
ing around to swear after the waiter for bringing his 
coffee cold, was diverted from that intention as he saw 
the group behind him. One of the Mexicans was a 
fellow he had dismissed from his employ that week. 
He had been foremost in stirring up the trouble of 
which he had been telling Lispenard. He now gave 
the man an insolent stare, as if he had been a dog. 
Then he recognised in the woman a girl on whom he 
had once been sweet, and gave her a prodigious wink. 
She tittered in response. 

With a snarling cry the Mexican leapt to his feet, 
his knife drawn. 

“ So,” warned Madame Campi, watching from her 
desk. 

Deliberately, yet more swiftly than it seemed pos- 
sible for such a large man to move, Cozzens turned to 
the danger of that snarling cry as at the hiss of a rat- 
tlesnake, and without rising from his chair covered 
the man with his revolver. 

A second passed thus, and ere it went everyone had 
disappeared from view with the exception of Lispen- 
ard, Madame Campi, who had not stirred, except to 
stop crocheting, and the two men at bay. 

The Mexican, pinned like a butterfly against the 

[ 180 ] 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

wall by that aim, turned a ghastly greenish hue, his 
eyes dull with fear, yet ominous and black with hatred. 
He had drawn a weapon first, and his enemy was free 
to fire in self-defence. Lispenard saw the hard jaw of 
the great mine owner settle, the full eyes narrow. Coz- 
zens was taking a final, more deliberate aim. The 
blood rushed to Lispenard’s head. He knew how 
hard this man had been. 

He reached across the table and struck his arm up. 

“ My God, Cozzens,” he cried, “ you can’t kill the 
fellow in cold blood ! ” 

The revolver went off, and was followed by a splin- 
tering sound. The bullet had gone through the big 
gilt mirror at the end of the long room. 

Before Cozzens, in his amazement, could take 
aim again, the Mexican sprang around the table, his 
knife raised. Lispenard, with a cry of agony, as he 
realised that his impulsive interference had put his 
friend in the power of his enemy, flung himself between 
the two men. With an instinctive remembrance of boy- 
ish fights with Jarvis Trent, he thrust his leg around 
the Mexican’s, and with a twist flung him to the floor, 
and fell on top of him. The two rolled over and over, 
until they were stopped by a table. Lispenard felt a 
sting in his shoulder that was like fire. He wondered 
why Cozzens did not do something to help him, but 
even as the thought passed through his mind he was 
released. 


[ 181 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


The mine owner dragged the Mexican to his feet, 
and twisted his arm until he dropped the knife with 
a shriek. 

“ You damned dirty rattler,” he said, slowly em- 
phasising each word with a shaking, “ I am going to 
let you go because Mr. Lispenard interfered, the same 
which he had no right to do, but I’m not going back 
on a friend, and if he seen fit to let you live, you var- 
mint, live you do.” 

The man’s companions crawled out from under the 
table where they had taken refuge. The girl was 
ashen and shaking, her pert prettiness gone. Campi, 
in his cook’s cap and apron, came from the kitchen and 
helped Lispenard into a chair. 

“ You’re not hurt, sir.^ ” he asked. 

“ A trifle shaken,” he answered. 

Cozzens still held on to the Mexican, loath to let 
him go. 

The silence which had fallen was scarcely less in- 
tense than the excitement had been. The waiter, who 
had fled into the street, opened the screen doors, and 
put his head in cautiously. 

“ Where are you, Carlota.? ” asked Cozzens. 

The girl came around in front, shaking. 

“ Now, Carlota,” he said huskily, “ I want you to 
see that this fellow of yours goes olF peaceable.” 

“ Yes,” she answered sullenly. 

He fixed her with his powerful eye. “ Here now, no 

[ 182 ] 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

black looks, my girl. Give me a kiss to show it’s all 
right.” 

All, except the writhing Mexican, grinned. 

She hesitated, then put up her face, and Cozzens 
kissed her, with a wink at Lispenard, who sat leaning 
back in his chair, pale and smiling. 

The woman coloured with relief and flattery. Her ^ 
coquetry was appealed to. The impending tragedy 
had ended in a kiss from her. She dragged at her 
companion’s arm, ashamed of him for being defeated, 
and the two went off, followed by the other man who 
had dined with them. As the painted screen doors 
swung behind the three, the Mexican, who up to that 
moment had maintained an ugly silence, began to 
talk. 

Cozzens began to laugh. “ He’s all right now. 
Those Mexicans will sometimes take it all out in gab- 
bling.” He resumed his seat at the table. “ Hi, you,” 
he shouted to the waiter, “ have you got that coffee 
hot yet.? ” 

Lispenard had a burning sensation in his shoulder 
and side, but he was conscious of a great elation. 
There was a moment when he thought Cozzens was 
Trent down by the swimming-pool. 

“ I feel like a boy again,” he said. 

“ So,” warned Madame Campi again. 

Cozzens looked across the table, staring. Then 
with a cry he was on his feet. “ My God, the man’s 
[ 183 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

dying ! ” He lifted Lispenard in his powerful arms 
and carried him out into the street, kicking open the 
screen doors with his foot. 

“ Stand away ! ” he shouted to the group of men 
about the step ; “ he wants air.” He laid him down on 
the sidewalk, supporting his head and shoulders in 
his arms. 

Madame Campi came hurrying out with a glass of 
brandy, and forced it between the white lips, holding 
the glass with one plump, steady hand while the other 
stroked his forehead. 

“ So, so,” she murmured. 

The tears were rolling down Cozzens’s face. He 
tried to raise his friend into a more comfortable posi- 
tion, and Lispenard winced and opened his eyes. The 
brandy had revived him. Madame Campi removed 
the glass from his lips, and her hand from his fore- 
head, but her watchful eyes did not leave his face. 
He struggled to rise. He was always humiliated by 
physical helplessness. With the help of Cozzens and 
Madame Campi he managed to get on his feet. Campi, 
white as his cook’s cap and apron, brought out his hat 
and put it on his head. 

“ Thank you,” he said, and then suddenly col- 
lapsed into Madame Campi’s plump arms. She 
forced him to sit down on the doorstep. 

“ I’m too proud,” he said, his eyes twinkling with 
his ready humour ; “ call the stage, Cozzens.” 

[ 184 ] 


CHAPTER XIV 


T he wound in Lispenard’s side proved to be 
an ugly one. The Mexican’s knife had barely 
missed his heart, but the stab on his shoulder 
was little more than a scratch. Cozzens established 
himself in the house with him, and occupied Tigg}” 
and Jim’s room, rising early in the mornings to pre- 
pare breakfast. He was proud of the cup of coffee 
he could make, and the delicacy with which he could 
poach an egg and slip it from the boiling water 
on to a slice of toast without breaking it. It was not 
until he had made the invalid comfortable for the day, 
and seen him eat his breakfast, that he went out and 
had his own on the kitchen table. After breakfast the 
women in the neighbourhood took turns staying with 
Lispenard through the day, until he came home at 
night after an early dinner at Campi’s, bringing his 
friend’s supper on a tray. It distressed him that he 
was obliged to be at his office all day. Occasionally he 
sent up his stenographer to see how the invalid was 
doing. His anxiety was touched with pride at the 
fight Lispenard had made. 

The time passed wearily for the sick man. His sev- 
eral nurses finally gave place to one. Most of the 
women who attended his church were hard-working, 
[ 185 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

with many duties, and could not well be spared from 
their homes, so the wife of the druggist, a prosperous 
and comfortable woman of middle life, took the respon- 
sibility of nursing him. She was a mother in Israel in 
his parish, and the president of the Women’s Aux- 
iliary League* Well, Lispenard had always been able 
to defy her, but, ill, she had him at her mercy, and 
served him with a sentiment not due to his personal- 
ity, but to his profession. Her respect for her rector 
as such was unbounded, and he groaned inwardly when 
she tiptoed about his bed. In the morning she read 
a chapter from the Bible to him and in the afternoon 
the service and selection of psalms for the day. He 
could not enjoy the reading, as her voice was so mo- 
notonous. Now and then he heard Miss Armes en- 
quire for him at the door. Old Teresa brought him 
over some delicacy every day, and several times his 
lunch, hot and well cooked. He wakened from 
a nap one afternoon, and asked Mrs. Burns to bring 
him a bundle of papers and magazines from his table. 

She was unable to find them. “ Can you think what 
you did with them, Mr. Lispenard ” 

He frowned in the effort to think clearly. Then 
his face cleared. “ Oh, I remember. I never got 
them. Never mind, Mrs. Burns.” And he turned 
over on his pillow with a sigh. 

His first request when they had gotten him into 
bed the evening of the stabbing was that Mrs. Lispen- 
[ 186 ] 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

ard should not hear of it. He did not wish her visit 
spoiled. Fortunately he had mailed a letter to her 
only that afternoon, and she would not expect to hear 
again from him immediately. Still he thought it as 
w^ell that in about a week Cozzens should write to Jim, 
and mention casually that his father was absorbed in 
his new book. 

‘‘ My poor wife will be more convinced than ever 
that I’m a Jock o’ Dreams if I seem to forget to write 
to her,” he said, sighing a little when they had agreed 
upon this artful letter. 

He found that reading continued into the after- 
noon gave him a nervous headache, and he was obliged 
to wait patiently through the longest hours of an in- 
valid’s day until Cozzens should come home. Through 
the half-open door of his bedroom he could hear Mrs. 
Burns singing a hymn as she sewed, or else gossiping 
with some crony who came in to spend the afternoon 
with her. Once he heard her refer to him as a lamb, 
and the remark flung him into a mood of nervous ex- 
asperation, although he was not without humourous 
appreciation of his own helpless rage. He insisted 
upon dismissing his physician after the first few days, 
and greeted smilingly the disturbed Cozzens, who came 
hurrying home from a meeting with the doctor on the 
street. 

“ I won’t have him running up any more of a bill 
on me. Every visit means a book lacking on my 
[ 187 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

shelves that I might have afforded otherwise. Besides, 
I don’t like him. I can’t bear his clammy fingers pok- 
ing about my ribs, and he is a Unitarian who never 
would support the church anyway, so I can afford to 
insult him.” 

“ It seems to me you’ve changed a lot lately,” said 
Cozzens drily. 

“ I have,” Lispenard retorted serenely. “ My 
blood’s up now. I’ve been too meek.” 

Lispenard’s old physician, a man who had settled in 
Sahuaro about the time they did, was abroad for a 
year with his family, and he had confided his practice 
to a young man who had come West for his health. 
In his heart Cozzens sympathised in his friend’s aver- 
sion to the young man. 

“ He pulled you through, though, all right,” he 
said gruffly. 

“ I don’t care,” said Lispenard, sitting up in bed to 
eat his supper, “ he’s a dolichocephalous blonde. What 
does he mean by having cold fingers ! It’s impudent 
of him in this glorious climate. And in a few days 
I’m going to send old Lady Burns kiting. With her 
the Woman’s Auxiliary has done its worst ! ” He had 
not been in such high spirits since he was taken ill. 

When it grew dark Cozzens brought in the lighted 
lamp and placed it on the bureau, and sat down by the 
side of the bed to read aloud. He had no eye for the 
printed page nor ear for subtle distinctions of pro- 
[ 188 ] 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

nunciation, and Lispenard now and then corrected 
him. He generally accepted the suggestion, but 
sometimes he held obstinately to his own opinion. This 
evening he insisted upon calling “ distance ” “ dis- 
tant.” 

“ Can’t you hear any difference between distant and 
distance.? ” cried Lispenard. 

“ No,” he answered, setting his jaw, “ I can’t. I 
was brought up to say ‘ distant,’ like I seen the wolf 
in the distant.” 

“ Distance,” said Lispenard. 

“Just the same,” Cozzens asserted, “‘distant.’ 
The mountains look distant.” 

“ There, that’s right,” cried Lispenard, relieved ; 
“ now how would you say, the mountains are some dis- 
tance away.? ” 

“ Same,” said Cozzens — “ the mountains are some 
distant away.” 

They argued it back and forth until Lispenard col- 
lapsed on his pillow, white with irritation. Cozzens, 
alarmed, forced him to swallow a little port wine. 

“ You’ll be the death of me ! ” Lispenard cried 
angrily, pushing his hand away. “ I don’t want that 
stuff. Can’t you say distance.? Distance — distant. 
Distant — distance. There, do you get it .? Oh, Lord, 
don’t talk about it any more. Sit down. Turn over 
to the next page. You’ve made me sick at my stom- 
ach.” 


[ 189 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

And Cozzens, furious, but feeling the necessity of 
yielding to the sick man, sat down and resumed the 
reading. 

Yet, during these days when he was confined to his 
bed, through all his pain, through all his nervous irri- 
tability, that exaltation, that spiritual rejuvenescence 
which came from his struggle in the restaurant, never 
left him. The man had risen above the timidity of 
the scholar. As he regained his strength he spoke 
much of this to his friend, of the sense of the adven- 
ture of life the incident had given him. 

“ I have learned a great lesson,” he told him. “ I 
shall force myself to be a man of action. I have been 
getting into a rut.” 

When he was able he wrote a letter to his wife in 
which he made no mention of his wound, but wrote a 
couple of pages on the adventure of life. The phrase 
pleased him, and he recalled how Trent had spoken of 
it to him on that first evening of his arrival in Sahuaro. 
He had never answered his letter ; and he now did so, 
writing the details of the affray to him, knowing that 
he would be interested. 

When he was able to go about, Cozzens went to the 
mines, to be gone a week. He had insisted that a 
young Mexican who went to Lispenard’s church 
should stay with him nights. Mrs. Burns continued 
to come in every day to clean up a bit, as she expressed 
it, and to visit with him a while. 

[ 190 ] 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


When he was strong enough he went to call on Miss 
Armes one afternoon, privileged by his character of 
invalid. She sent word down to him that she was 
just rising from her siesta^ and that if he would wait 
until she was dressed she would be down in a little 
while. 

It was such a hot-, dusty day that he felt tired from 
the short walk to her gate, and was grateful for the 
shade of the garden into which he looked through the 
arching adobe columns of the corridor. He wished he 
might see Major Armes taking his accustomed walk 
up and down the path in front of the graceful foun- 
tain. The perfume of flowers was heavy in the air; 
the blue sky showing through the dark green of the 
magnolias made him dream; the foliage of some of 
the trees hid fruit that gleamed jewel-like. He re- 
called the fairy tale of which Trent had once spoken, 
the miller’s daughter whose hands were cut off* by the 
Evil One, and who ate the fruit from the trees with 
her mouth until the king made her silver hands. His 
sense of beauty was satisfied. The green and bloom- 
ing life of the garden seemed part of his own rejuve- 
nescence. He sat thinking of gardens, his delicate 
half-smile on his lips. 

“ The Lady of the Garden,” he said when he rose 
to greet his hostess. 

‘‘ I had expected to see you looking ill,” she an- 
swered. 


[ 191 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


I am younger by twenty-five years,” he said ; 
“ that fight in Campi’s took me back to my boyhood.” 

It seemed a long time since he had said good-bye 
to her at his gate that evening. 

“ Did you come for those papers and magazines ? ” 
she asked, divining his thought. “ I have saved them.” 

“ No,” he answered, “ I came for a cup of tea. I 
have come to the conclusion that it takes a lady to 
brew a cup of tea. It should be fragrant, should it 
not.f^ Mrs. Burns would make it too strong, and since 
I get my own lunches it doesn’t taste right.” 

“ After such flattery I will go in and make it my- 
self,” she said. She brought out a nest of Chinese 
tea-tables and her work-bag, and a new magazine 
which had come the night before. ‘‘ I will make the 
tea the last thing,” she told him, “ so as to have it 
just right. I feel that my reputation is at stake.” 

While she was gone on this mission he looked over 
the magazine and found an article to read aloud. The 
afternoon was one of serenity and charm. After the 
tea, which was all that he could have desired it to be, 
she took up her embroidery, and he read the article he 
had selected. At last they drifted into conversation, 
but he did not speak of his own new spiritual experi- 
ence, the new birth he felt within himself. He could 
mention it to Cozzens, but to tell her would have been 
sentimental, if not absolutely mawkish. 

His love of beauty, which the garden satisfied, deep- 

[ 192 ] 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


ened as he looked at her, and as he had often felt 
bathed by the desert sunshine, so now his whole being 
seemed permeated with the warmth and hght of her 
beauty. Her face fascinated him anew after his long 
deprivation; he loved to compare her to the desert. 
This comparison he kept jealously to himself, and had 
never mentioned it except once to Cozzens. 

“ What have you been doing since I last saw you ? ” 
he asked. 

“ You would laugh at me if I told you,” she replied ; 
“ you have always said I was unpractical.” 

“ Distrust that man who protests too much,” he an- 
swered. “ I am the most unpractical person I ever 
knew. That is why I make such a virtue of practical 
ability. Did I not devote an entire chapter to the sub- 
ject in my book.^ I am like the reformed temper- 
ance lecturer who spoke with such conviction on the 
horrors of delirium tremens.” 

“ But you haven’t reformed,” she retorted. 

“ Oh, yes, I have,” he insisted ; “ I reformed yester- 
day.” 

His blue eyes were winning. He anticipated what 
she had to tell him. She, the delight of his intellec- 
tual life, was so personal yet so impersonal an element 
in his existence ! 

“ It’s some sketches I’ve been making,” she ex- 
plained ; “ wait until I get my portfolio from the li- 
brary.” She went into the house and came back with 
[ 193 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

the big black book under her arms, and, clearing away 
the tea-things, put it on the table between them. 

“ I am growing impatient,” he said. “ You are a 
long time opening it.” He began to untie the strings, 
his expression mischievous as Tiggy’s might have 
been. It was this frequent lightness of mood playing 
on the surface of his real scholarship which made him 
charming. 

She laid her hand protectingly on the book; their 
fingers barely escaped touching. “ No, no,” she said, 
blushing. He, too, recognised a change in her. She 
was no longer as calm, and seemed more like a young 
girl than he had ever known her. And he was en- 
tranced by this rare mood in her. 

“ I will tell you,” she began, her eyes on his. “ So 
often I have been on the desert at sunset, and watched 
the mountains grow more and more magnificent. And 
then I have felt so wistful when I would look from 
them to the setting sun. I have felt that the moun- 
tain view could never be ruined, but as Sahuaro grows 
into a city ugly office buildings and houses will rise 
to spoil that level line of the desert which is now so 
beautiful. So I picture to myself the buildings I 
would like to see go up against the sunset. I thought 
of a church, but that would be only one, and so I 
amused myself building a university. Unfortunately 
all my building had to be done on paper.” 

She opened her book and showed him the water- 

[ 194 ] 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

colour drawing she had made of a group of buildings 
in the old mission style of architecture. 

“ You see, I have copied Santa Ines for the chapel,” 
she pointed out to him. 

He caught the inspiration of her thought, and 
raised his eyes to hers with a kind of worship shining 
in them. She loved the desert as he did ; she was like 
its embodied spirit. He was filled with wonder and 
admiration for her, this woman of exalted vision, and 
he remembered Aspasia, the wife of Pericles. 

A while of silence succeeded. She sat with her 
hands resting lightly on the drawing, the little table 
between them. He leant forward, defiant of the pain 
in his side which made him wince, and taking her hand 
lifted it to his lips. 

He never forgot her amazement, her shame. Not 
until that moment had he seen the depths of her trust 
in him. His face burned at the look she gave him, 
the primitive look of a woman startled. 

She took up her embroidery again. “ I wish I 
might see my plans followed out,” she said, matching 
a skein of silk. He saw that her one desire was to 
bridge over the embarrassment of the preceding mo- 
ment, and that the only thing which now remained for 
him to do was to accept the situation, and continue 
the conversation along impersonal lines. 

“ For a moment,” he said, ‘‘ I had a feeling of re- 
gret that the element of eternity in the landscape 
[ 195 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

would have to go. Even your beautiful buildings did 
not compensate for that wonderful unbroken line of 
the horizon.” 

“ I know it,” she answered, “ but I still maintain 
they would be better than office buildings and separate 
houses.” 

“ Of course,” he assented, but he scarcely knew what 
he was saying. How could he explain to her that he 
had not been thinking of her as of an ordinary 
woman; that she stirred all the poetry of his nature, 
and he saw in her a type. But he was thankful for her 
tact, which had recalled the past, which glanced into 
the future, and decided to accept this incident as un- 
important in their friendship. 

They maintained the conversation along neutral 
lines, but all the time he was becoming more con- 
scious of the fact that his first impression that she had 
changed was correct. As he watched her embroidering 
he thought that the colouring had suddenly gone out 
of her personality ; her hair was dull, her face pale. A 
restless unhappiness quivered and went in her face, 
and settled greyly in her eyes. He was reminded of 
the desert in a sullen mood when yellow sand-storms 
whirled and stung, and obscured the air. But never 
in its strangest moods had the desert ceased to make 
its eternal appeal to his imagination, nor did she now. 
He realised that she was unhappy, yet could not be- 
lieve the evidence of his eyes. He had known a tragic 
[ 196 ] 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

mood in her when her father was killed, but her sor- 
row had been too exalted to find expression in restless 
unhappiness. He spoke to her, and she looked 
straight at him with eyes which did not seem to see 
him for a moment. He could not believe that his one 
foolish moment had wrought this spiritual estrange- 
ment. The breeze blew the water-colour drawing she 
had made from the table into the garden, and neither 
of them observed it. 

When he rose to go he saw that she tried to be un- 
conventional and charming once more, even walking 
to the gate with him, and calling attention to the 
plentiful bloom of the roses over her doorway; then, 
remembering the bundle of magazines, she insisted 
upon his waiting while she went back into the house to 
get them for him. 

But he went away profoundly depressed. As he 
walked home he was stung by the thought that her 
magnanimity had been due to her consciousness that 
he was a sick man. He, too, could appreciate that he 
had shown the sentimentality of a sick man, and he 
knew that if he had been in his usual health he never 
would have forgotten himself. But the fact did not 
lessen his humiliation. 


[ 197 ] 


CHAPTER XV 


I ISPENARD prepared his own supper that 
night, and, after he finished, filled his lamp 
and put on his dressing-gown. Then he seated 
himself at his table to write. The evening had become 
chilly, and he would have enjoyed a fire, but he felt 
that he had not the strength to go out and bring in 
the wood. The young man who had been staying 
nights with him would not be in until late, as he was 
going to an entertainment in town. Lispenard was 
glad to be alone, to work undisturbed on his new book. 
It would be the first time he had written since his ill- 
ness. His humiliation of the afternoon lent now a cer- 
tain sternness to his mood, and he wrote forcefully be- 
cause of it. An hour passed away, and he became 
completely absorbed in his subject, stimulated to more 
nervous effort by the frequent catching pain in his 
side. He felt that he was working against odds, and 
his mind was running a race with his physical self. 
A little before twelve he reached his limit of endur- 
ance, and put away his manuscript, but when he would 
have risen he was surprised to find that he dare not 
get up from his desk for fear of falling. Such weak- 
ness seized him that he thought he would have fallen 
to the floor. It now remained for him to wait pa- 
[ 198 ] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


tiently in his chair until the young man should re- 
turn. It could not be long, for it was already late. 
He wished he had made the effort after all to build a 
fire. The room was growing cold. He held his chilled 
fingers near the lamp to get them warm, while he 
glanced over his desk, wondering what he should do to 
employ himself while he waited. He was in no hu- 
mour to write a letter, and there was not a book nor 
paper on the table which he had not read. Just with- 
out his reach, offering a Tantalus draught of delight, 
his books lined the walls either side of the empty fire- 
place. His eye glanced them over fondly, proudly, 
lingering on the new rich edition of the “ Arabian 
Nights.” Then he noticed the slim blue volume of Sill’s 
poems, and wished he might re-read the “ Venus of 
Milo.” Line by line the poem came to him — that 
immortal vision which had befallen Praxiteles. The 
sculptor had wrought the perfect figure from the flaw- 
less image in his soul. 

He, himself, had striven to invest a mortal woman 
with the attributes of a goddess. He saw that the 
poetry his imagination had woven about Miss Armes 
had been sentimental; that it had now crumbled to 
her feet like a veil of ashes, leaving her very human, 
the eyes he had thought all serenity wide with the 
look of a woman startled. The goddess he had 
divined in her was made mortal by his own weak- 
ness. But the flaw was in himself, not her, and he 
[ 199 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

thought with a pity which was scarcely personal that 
the sentimentality wrought by the sick body revealed 
a spiritual insincerity. He went over the scene of the 
afternoon, and did not spare himself in his humilia- 
tion, analysing pitilessly the impulse which had led to 
that caress. She had shown him those plans for an 
ideal university, and as his mind caught the inspiration 
of hers, his heart had leapt to the thought that her 
lofty visions set her apart from the ordinary experi- 
ences of women — love — marriage. Her devotion to 
the things of the mind seemed like faithfulness to him 
whose intellectual companion she had been so long. 
His love of the desert had symbolised itself in her 
mysterious personality. He drew pen and paper to- 
ward him, and began writing a sonnet to her as the em- 
bodied spirit of the desert. When he had finished it 
he folded the paper and enclosed it in an envelope and 
wrote her name on the outside. It was a disappoint- 
ment to him that he was not more of a poet. The 
thought always seemed a finer thing to him than the 
expression, and he had not the lyrical gift. 

It pleased him to write her name. To-morrow he 
would destroy his verse, which he had written only 
to say hail and farewell to his old conception of 
her. There remained to him a friendly and lovely 
young woman, but his goddess had been a mi- 
rage woven by the magical air of the desert. 
And he remembered Trent’s appeal to him to 
[ WO ] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


leave, his urgent warning that he had remained too 
long. His soul rose and combated his friend’s judg- 
ment, and resolved to win its spiritual victory yet from 
out of the desert. That struggle for life in the restau- 
rant had left him more of a man, and of sterner 
fibre. The humiliation of the afternoon was purging 
his soul of sentimental dross, and he saw how he had 
turned from his wife’s struggling and anxious spirit 
to the peace of a girl’s untroubled beauty. He sick- 
ened with self-scorn as he thought of Adele’s faithful- 
ness to her children’s welfare ; her impulsive honesty ; 
her warrantable bitterness. He had never thought 
himself unfaithful to her ; he looked now into the 
depths of his own deception. He, the philosopher, 
ever boastful of his love of truth, how had he dealt 
with her And suddenly, as real as if her actual voice 
had spoken that moment in the room to him, he heard 
her say: 

“ Theodore, look at me just once as you used to. 
Look at me kindly, Theodore, in the old way. Do not 
make me feel I mean nothing to you.” 

And the appeal had not touched him at the time, 
but the words had remained in his memory. His poor 
wife! Ah, if he could but take her to his heart that 
moment I Clearer his vision grew and clearer, until in 
his white face, as he sat there so weakly in his chair, 
his eyes flamed blue and spirit-like. 

For some moments he had been conscious of a noise 

[201 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

in the street, and as it drew nearer he recognised 
drunken singing. The revellers were going home 
from their party, and he was alarmed lest one of them 
should be the young fellow he expected. 

“ I could not deal with a drunken man,* he thought 
helplessly, and managed to rise and go to the door and 
lock it. Then he turned the lamp low. The steps and 
singing stopped in front of the house, and in a mo- 
ment the handle of the door was turned, and a foolish 
voice called his name, hiccoughing. Another voice, 
more sober, called to the fellow to come away and let 
the minister sleep. There were some quarrelsome words, 
another trial at the door, followed by a kick on the 
panel; then the sound of a scuffle, and finally quiet, 
and the sound once more of their singing down the 
street. 

He was so grateful when they had gone that the cold 
perspiration stood in beads on his forehead, for he was 
in no condition to go through a scene with a set of 
hoodlums. He had not the strength to reach his bed- 
room, and he lay down on the lounge. He had for- 
gotten to blow out the flame of the lamp, but it would 
soon go out of itself, for the oil must be low. The 
lounge was near a window, and he managed to push up 
the shade so he could command a view of the outside 
world of night. The excitement and depression of the 
day had been too great a strain, in his weak condition, 
and brought on his old trouble of the heart, so that in 
[ 202 ] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


his agony it seemed to him his life was torn from him. 
Never had he known such pain ; it was like dissolution. 
When it at last left him he felt that he was dying. 
This roused in him no rebellion, and he awaited the end 
calmly, content that in dying he might look to the last 
on the beautiful, peaceful desert. One wish must be 
left ungranted, and that was his desire for the comfort 
of Adele’s hand in his. The low-turned lamp was be- 
ginning to flicker. He saw this by the shadows it cast 
on the wall. And as this light within the room grew 
dimmer, so the desert air outside grew bluer and more 
brilliant, ever encroaching, until its radiance alone 
should fill the room. It seemed to him that the flicker- 
ing lamp-flame was his own soul going out, to become 
absorbed into the fathomless blue air of the night. 
Poignant as fresh pain came the thought of Adele’s 
anguish, stabbing his peace. For her sake, he must 
blow out that lamp. If he let the light flicker out of 
itself, he would die. He reached the desk with 
strength almost delirious, and blew out the flame. 

The night grew grey ; the rose of dawn was aflame 
in the sky, and he knew that he still lived. The morn- 
ing slipped into the afternoon; the burning sunshine 
poured in upon him, and he lay with his arm over his 
eyes, for he was too weak to rise and draw the shade 
down. He had been so well yesterday that he had told 
Mrs. Burns she need not come, that he might be down 
to call on her to show her the improvement he had 
[ 203 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

made, and so he lay alone all day, sleeping fitfully. 
He had waking, troubled dreams, not of his wife, but 
of Miss Armes, in which she ever escaped him like a 
mirage. 

It was Cozzens who came late in the afternoon, and 
who, when he found the door locked and no signs of 
life, hurried around the house and entered by the 
back door. 

Lispenard saw the big fellow, and knew he was 
saved. He put out his hand to him weakly. “ Coz- 
zens,” he said faintly, “ Cozzens,” as if the very name 
gave strength. 

Cozzens undressed him with the tenderness of a 
woman, and got him into bed and slipped his powerful 
arm around his shoulders in order that he might sit up. 

“ And take a nippy,” said the great fellow cheer- 
fully, reaching for the flask in his hip-pocket. 

Lispenard was very feeble, but he knew he had 
passed through the crisis. “ I don’t want you to call 
that solemn fool,” he said, when he was able to talk. 
“ It isn’t my wound. It was an attack of my old trou- 
ble. I overdid. I want something to eat.” 

And a little later he added : “ And light up your 
cigar. I want the smell of tobacco in my nostrils once 
more, and to have you read the paper aloud.” 

About nine o’clock they heard a knock on the front 
door. 

“ Coming,” called Cozzens, throwing the paper he 

[ 204 ] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


was reading down on the bed and seizing the lamp 
from the bureau. 

Lispenard, left in darkness, heard him explaining 
to the person at the door how he was. 

Then he heard the reply, and recognised Miss 
Armes’s voice. “ I was anxious about him, and when I 
was going home just now from the post-office I didn’t 
see any light, so I came over to investigate. I thought 
he looked badly yesterday afternoon.” 

He was not proof against the sting of this fresh hu- 
miliation. How she must have been revolted by the 
unwelcome kiss of a sick man ! He turned restlessly 
on his pillow, wishing she would go. “ Vanity, vanity, 
all is vanity,” he said, and scorned himself for caring 
that he must pay the price in mortification. The price 
was so little for such a priceless self -revelation. He 
might well be thankful. 

Cozzens was asking her to step inside a moment, 
while he went out into the kitchen to get a cup. The 
coffee was out, and he wished to borrow some from her 
for breakfast. As he went into the dining room he 
told her that she could go to the bedroom door and 
speak to the invalid if she wished. 

“ I might disturb him,” she said, and Lispenard, 
hearing, was amused. Women were always less likely 
to pass over scenes of sentiment than men. 

“ I see there’s a letter to you on the desk,” said Coz- 
zens, returning. 


[S05] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ Oh, thank you ! ” she answered. ‘‘ I suppose it’s 
a note Mrs. Lispenard must have enclosed in one of 
her letters for me. I’ve found it.” 

Cozzens thrust his head into the bedroom. “ I’m 
going across the street with Yucca to get some coffee 
for breakfast. I’ll be back right away.” 

Lispenard was smiling in the darkness. He thought 
it would have created some sensation had he been found 
dead, and on his desk that last final word to her. Who 
of the living could read it right, and know that his 
hail and farewell was to his fancy, and not to the real 
woman.? ‘‘ There is much virtue in caution,” he told 
himself. “ I shall write no more poems in my present 
condition of health.” 

As Cozzens and Miss Armes were going out of the 
gate they met the young fellow who had been drunk 
the night before. He was going in, when the big 
mine owner stopped him. 

“ You vamose the other way. We don’t want you 
around here any more.” 

The two walked on. Miss Armes glanced back. 
“ He is still standing there by the gate. I think he 
must wish to go and apologise to Mr. Lispenard.” 

Cozzens turned around in the middle of the road 
and stared back. There was a menace implied in his 
powerful figure, his absolute silence. The young fel- 
low hesitated, then went away, whistling jauntily. 
“ It takes me to deal with a Mexican,” he said, in his 
[ 206 ] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

husky, pleasant voice. “ You bet they don’t make 
their whining apologies go down with me. I rule 
’em.” 

At her doorway he delayed her a moment that he 
might ask her again to marry him, and she repeated 
her refusal. His scheme of existence was to marry her 
and settle down near Mr. and Mrs. Lispenard and the 
two boys. An engagement of indefinite length would 
have pleased him, for he was in no haste to marry. 
Like a sailor he had a sweetheart in every port, and he 
was at present engrossed in a black-eyed widow at the 
Capital. He was tempted to marry her, but he felt he 
could never trust her as he could Yucca, although she 
attracted him the more, for black eyes were irresistible 
to him, doubly so because he thought them dangerous. 
He was secretive with Lispenard in regard to his love 
affairs, having great respect for the cloth, although 
his friend did not always wear it. While she was gone 
into the house to get the coffee he hummed his favour- 
ite Spanish air. 

“ Yucca,” he said, when she came back, “ Lispenard 
once said a queer thing about you to me — that you 
were like the desert.” 

“ I.? ” she said, without amazement. 

His full eyes grew speculative. In the dusk her 
face looked strange to him, even in all its fa- 
miliarity of feature. I declare,” he added slowly, 
“ you do. I can’t put it into words, but it’s 
[ 207 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

there. The desert’s in you.” Fascination crept into 
his gaze for the first time, in all the years he had known, 
her. He attempted to kiss her, and barely touched her 
cheek with his lips. 

“ I don’t want you ever to come here alone again,” 
she said. She stood still for some time when he had 
gone. Yes, she was like the desert, the barren 
desert, which had no beauty in itself, but caught all 
by reflection, even as her life had no reality of experi- 
ence, but fastened on dreams. 

She went into the house, and into the room where 
her father’s portrait was, and stood looking up at the 
fierce soldier, with his eagle eye and his unquenchable 
pride. He was the one reality of her life. And he 
was dead ! She rubbed the back of her hand slowly 
with her handkerchief, then she rubbed her cheek. 
Her house was silent and she went into the court where 
her father used to walk, and there it seemed less lonely 
to her. Some creature was lapping greedily, as only 
a desert animal could, at the fountain, and she saw its 
long body as it stood on its hind legs, its furry pointed 
ears, its eyes glistening in the light from the window. 
As she called to it, it ran away. She was not fright- 
ened, but went to see how it had made its way in, and 
found that old Teresa had left an outer door leading 
into the court open. She closed it and went quietly 
back to the fountain. She remembered a story she 
once read of a girl who had been reared in ignorance 
[ 208 ] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


of death, and she felt in a strange way their fates were 
similar. One lost the preciousness of existence be- 
cause she did not know why it should be prized, 
and she whose life had been made all beauty seemed to 
have lost reality. She shook with passionate revolt. 
Who loved life more than she, and with all her pride 
longed more for its experiences.? She thought of 
Trent, stern, rugged, unbeautiful, and felt that he 
had pushed her from him. She raised her arms in 
half -embrace and let them fall about the rim of the 
fountain. The stone struck chill through her lace 
sleeves. She was weeping. Where was he now? And 
she, shut in this place of beauty — a fairy princess in 
a fairy garden ! Who would believe her tears could 
be bitter? 

Lispenard’s recovery was slow after this relapse, and 
it was days before his strength fully returned to him. 
Yet he was thankful for the weariness and pain. For 
years he had been so free from illness that he felt he 
had lost sympathy with sick people. He saw, too, 
that he had all the weakness of over-scholarship, and 
had become abstracted and impersonal. He decided 
to do more active work and get himself out of his bad 
habit of over-thinking. He was weary of books, and 
wished he might take an overship at the mines under 
Cozzens. The old longing, that fairy wish to live sev- 
eral different lives, was ever in him. 

Day after day before his eyes was spread the won- 

[S09] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

derful panorama of the desert. His love for it was the 
great romance of his life. He looked to it now for in- 
spiration for the future. 

One afternoon that thing so rare that its coming 
seemed a miracle, happened; the clouds, so brilliant, 
so white in the turquoise depths of sky, drew together. 
The desert became grey as the sea in a fog, and it 
rained. He got up from his bed and wrapped himself 
in his dressing-gown, and seated himself in front of 
the open window. The mist from the driving rain 
blew cool upon him. It carried him back to April 
nights of long ago, to the swimming-pool, to the trill 
of frogs in a marshy place, to the puddles on the side- 
walk beneath his own bare feet; Adele’s face, sweet 
and wet as a little rose in the rain, and their first 
childish kiss in the old barn in which they had sought 
shelter. Intense emotion ran through him. From all 
wistful longings for the beauty of the East he had de- 
liberately turned for years. Now these homesick 
yearnings flooded his spirit, and brought him nearer 
his wife in sympathy. His philosophy seemed barren, 
compared to this flooding emotion which racked him. 
So far his life had been a failure. He had not even 
any influence over the poor handful of people which 
made up his congregation. They accepted him with 
the large toleration of the West, and admired his 
learning, but they left him alone, save when his offices 
in the church demanded his presence. The rains were 
[ 210 ] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


calling him East once more, sounding in his ears with 
Adele’s voice. He could hear her pleading in the rain. 

^But the call of the desert was mightier. To turn his 
back now and go away would be acceptance of defeat. 
It was here that he would wrest his victory, and in his 
success Adele should find her lost happiness. 

For years to come would the rains that spring 
be spoken of by the old inhabitants of Sahuaro. It 
seemed as if the clouds kept their force for that one 
place, and rolled back and broke over the little town, 
and rolled and broke again and again. The streams 
rushing down the mountains carried huge boulders 
along, and then the water lost itself in the choking 
sands, and was vanquished by the conquering desert 
and dropped below to the underground rivers. The 
toughest roots were torn up and carried short distances. 
The water rushed into an arroyo which, to the memory 
of the oldest inhabitant of Sahuaro, had never been 
anything but a shifting bed of sand. Haydon, who 
spent most of his time during the rain up in the little 
balcony, looking off to the desert through a field- 
glass, was first to notice this new stream, and told Miss 
Armes, who had come down to the depot to telegraph to 
a cousin she expected to postpone her visit until the 
rains were over. The glimpse through the field-glass 
made her wild with excitement to go nearer, and she 
hunted up Cozzens and persuaded him to go with her. 
They rode straight against the soft and misty wind. 

[ 211 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

The day was captious as April. Now a shower drenched 
them to the skin, and they were delighted as children. 
Had it not been for the clinging wet sands, they could 
not have held their horses in, for the animals were as 
exhilarated as they. 

But when they reached the boiling pool where the 
stream plunged to its death in the smothering sands, 
the glory of their ride departed. The water had 
turned up the skeletons of a party of emigrants who 
must have perished long ago. They saw iron imple- 
ments, and a kettle of past date, and a clumsy waggon- 
wheel. 

They sat on their horses, gazing down on this hid- 
eous revelation, feeling an indescribable woe. Cozzens 
was the first to break the silence. “ Poison,” he said 
briefly, and, turning his horse’s head, told her to come, 
and they rode home again without a word. 

Where the dry bed was there had once been a spring 
of bright, sparkling water, and the fact that the party 
had all perished in the same place showed they had 
drunk of it, unobservant of the fact that nothing grew 
about it, and that there was no trace of animals coming 
there to drink. There were still such springs on the 
desert, and it was to the honour of an experienced 
traveller over the trails that when he saw such a stream 
he stopped and scratched or wrote on a board or stone 
the word Poison, and beneath, a second explanatory 
word. Arsenic, and erected it near the bright water, 
[ 21 ^] 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

with infinite pains, bracing it with stones against the 
dragging sands. 

When Lispenard heard of the discovery he insisted 
upon going to the place the next morning, weak 
though he was. To him alone the sight was not de- 
pressing. He was filled with sublimity, and the mag- 
nificence of the prophecy in the Bible came to him 
afresh : 

‘‘ And the sea shall give up its dead.” 

That afternoon the old mission Roman Catholic 
priest went out with his Indian converts and acolytes, 
and buried again the bones, and said a service over the 
grave, and piled stones on it in the form of a cross. 

“ What does the poor body matter if the soul is 
free.^ ” said Lispenard, when he heard of the proceed- 
ing. But, nevertheless, it struck him as peculiarly fit- 
ting that the Indians, sprung from the first inhabi- 
tants of the land whose treacherous waters had killed 
their alien guests, should bury them, and that the 
service should be that of the first church established in 
the desert. 

And through it all he waited his inspiration, watch- 
ing the leaden sky and the forlorn desert and the 
crouching mountains. 

The skies cleared, and the miracle of the rains was 
revealed. The mesquite and grease- wood spread in 
wide and lovely patches of silver-grey and the candle- 
stick put out its row of single, little green leaves, the 
[ 213 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


brightest green on the desert. The yucca bore its tall 
bloom of pale yellow blossoms, and the flower-of-gold, 
loved by the Spaniards, was in the mountain crevices. 
The cacti put forth gorgeous, scentless blossoms in 
purple and such scarlet that it was a marvel. Flowers 
appeared which had not been seen for twenty years. 
But all too soon the sands sucked up the moisture, and 
the efflorescence of colour and bloom vanished in the 
scorching sunshine; but the big roots underground 
were natural reservoirs, and animals dug at them and 
drank, and became sleeker and lost something of their 
fierceness. 

One evening, as he sat watching the sunset, its long 
rays reaching across the level sands to the magnifi- 
cently rising mountains, he thought again of Miss 
Armes’s plan of a university which should rise against 
the eternal splendour of that sky. It seemed to him 
afterwards that he must have had a moment of vision, 
for he saw the roofs and towers and long colonnades 
against that glowing orange west. 

His inspiration had come. He saw his work. 

Here in Sahuaro should rise a university, and in it 
he would teach young men those ideals he loved. 

His rejuvenescence was complete. 


[ 214 ] 


CHAPTER XVI 


D isillusionment in regard to his vast for- 
tune had already fastened upon Cozzens. His 
personal habits were simple, and he had no de- 
sire to travel, so that when his friend proposed he 
should employ his riches to leaving some lasting me- 
morial of himself to his town, the idea was instantly 
attractive. But he protested against the university 
project. His idea was to build a splendid church, or 
a library. It was some time before Lispenard could 
convince him that the complete university should em- 
brace both of these features. The like institution in 
the Capital was poor and struggling, and run by poli- 
tics, housed in a few shabby buildings ; and the big 
mine owner had no desire to see such an experiment 
repeated in the town he loved. 

‘‘ But it will not be the same,” Lispenard persuaded 
patiently. ‘‘ It is because that has not the free spirit 
of the true university that I want you to endow one 
here.” He pointed out to him the suggested beauty in 
the drawing Miss Armes had made, and Cozzens, hav- 
ing, as his friend always said, imagination, if not cul- 
ture, sent her sketch East to a leading firm of archi- 
tects to be developed properly, and a general estimate 
given of the cost. 

Lispenard found an unexpected ally in a newcomer 

[ 216 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

to Sahuaro. The miracles of the rain had reached the 
ever-attentive ear of science, and the government at 
Washington sent a man to investigate^' He was an ex- 
perimental botanist of wide reputation. Like all schol- 
ars of J ewish extraction who have once turned the acu- 
men of their race to the acquirement of knowledge, he 
had succeeded brilliantly. He needed an assistant, and 
Lispenard offered his services, glad of the opportunity 
to eke out his meagre salary. This Professor Abend- 
roth, black-bearded, with soft, melancholy brown eyes 
beaming behind his huge gold-bowed spectacles, looked 
an ascetic and a dreamer. In reality, he was an enthu- 
siast, fond of fun as a boy, and shrewd as Coz- 
zens himself. He had a room in the depot to sleep in, 
and rented an empty adobe ranch-house for an experi- 
ment-station, where he kept snakes and lizards and Gila 
monsters. He discovered two new poisons, and his joy 
was unbounded. Like Trent, he experienced the sym- 
pathy and hospitality of the West, and found gifts 
that an occasional cowboy left at the depot for him in 
Haydon’s care. These were generally some rare vari- 
ety of plant, a tortoise, and once a tiny box of living 
jewels, the beetles that hid beneath the stones. Abend- 
roth confided his delight at these attentions to Lis- 
penard. 

“ It is not personal, for they do not know me. It is 
far better. It is a tribute to their government, which 
I represent.” 


[ 216 ] 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

While he was there Miss Armes had a guest arrive 
to spend a few weeks with her, and the two visitors 
were a considerable addition to the limited society of 
Sahuaro. 

This lady was a cousin of Major Armes, and the 
feminine counterpart of the portrait of him. She had 
been too selfish to take any real interest in her cousin’s 
daughter, but she visited her occasionally when it 
suited her own pleasure and convenience. Lispenard 
was really devoted to her ; he relished her cynicism and 
found her scorn of his own profession refreshing. She 
invariably informed him coolly that he was wasting 
his life, but that she personally was not in the least 
concerned. She was the product of nearly seventy 
years of unbroken health and spiritual pride and finan- 
cial independence. Neither she nor Cozzens had any 
liking for each other. She was bored by him, and he 
on his part told Lispenard that she didn’t meet his 
idea of a natural old lady. 

She and Miss Armes often accompanied the two 
men in their botanical expeditions into the desert, 
and Mrs. Holt was as untiring as any of the other 
three. 

Something of the old spirit of the place before 
Adele went away was restored, and the four, including 
Cozzens when he was at home, met evenings with Miss 
Armes to sort out and catalogue the specimens col- 
lected during the day. 

[ 217 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

Abendroth soon discovered that his hostess was the 
only person on whom he could depend to continue the 
work faithfully into the evening hours, for Lispenard 
and Mrs. Holt invariably drifted into conversation, to 
which Cozzens listened, smoking his heavy black 
cigars and thrumming the mandolin when he was not 
jingling the loose coin in his pocket. 

But he generally tired of Mrs. Holt, and drew up to 
the table. His own hands, considering his build, were 
extremely small, but Abendroth’s hands were large and 
heavy, yet the skill and delicacy of his touch was re- 
markable, and it was fascinating to see him separate 
a flower into its minutest parts. The scientist had 
opened a new world to Cozzens. He knew the desert in 
its bigness; he had never before formed any concep- 
tion of its infinitude of small things. 

He was not more absorbed than Miss Armes; and 
Lispenard, restored to strength and welling humour, 
was amused at the depths of his own vanity in ever 
having supposed that her intellectual interest was in- 
dicative of faithfulness to him. She turned the same 
clear gaze he had once thought personal upon Abend- 
roth, who was charmed by her, and wished his wife 
could meet her. 

Now and then the professor entered into the conver- 
sation of the others. He had never enjoyed him- 
self more in his life than on the desert. He liked 
the people, and was interested in the Indians, and 
[ 218 ] 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


had become acquainted with the old mission priest; 
the flora was fascinating; he basked in the sun- 
shine. 

“ There’s my friend at home,” he said, “ experi- 
menting with electric lights and yellow walls to cure 
skin diseases, and here’s all this glorious sunshine go- 
ing to waste, actually oozing into the ground, day 
after day, and few getting the benefit of it. Your irri- 
gation projects don’t appeal to me. I would like to see 
the desert left as it is, the health resort of the world. 
I am surprised that your University has no botan- 
ical laboratory. It has a good mining school, I ob- 
served, but no department of irrigation, nor chair of 
Spanish. Plow are your young men going to learn the 
value of their own environment A university should 
first meet its home needs.” 

Cozzens, thrumming idly on the mandolin, glanced 
up shrewdly. He had not capitulated to Lispenard’s 
urgent persuasion, in spite of the fact that he con- 
sented to have the plans drawn up. He had done this 
to please him and Yucca, in much the spirit he would 
have indulged Jim and Tiggy. He would let them go 
as far as he thought wise, and was not unwilling to foot 
the bill of the extravagance they had urged him into. 
He intended to have the plans framed when they ar- 
rived, and to present them to her. 

“ What do you mean that a desert laboratory would 
do.? All this sort of thing.? ” he asked in his husky 
[ 219 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

voice, and with a wave of his hand toward the cata- 
loguing. 

“ Much more than that,” Abendroth answered, 
looking at him over his heavy gold-bowed spectacles, 
and forgetting his specimens in the interest he took in 
the subject he had opened; “much more than that, 
Mr. Cozzens. It would effect the permanent better- 
ment of the human race.” 

“ How ridiculous ! ” cried Mrs. Holt. “ These sci- 
entists claim everything. Botany was not made so 
much of when I was young, any more than dentistry. 
Look at me. Every tooth in my head is sound, and I 
have twice the strength Yucca has. How do you ac- 
count for me.J’ ” 

“ The question is beyond me,” put in Lispenard, 
his eyes twinkling. 

“ Well, pass me a peppermint,” she said. “ Go on, 
Mr. Abendroth. Don’t act so like a schoolgirl. Yucca. 
It looks simple in you. If you haven’t your education 
by this time, I’d conceal the fact.” She smiled at 
Lispenard, appreciative of her own wit. 

Abendroth was waiting patiently until she should 
allow him to continue. “ For instance, Mr. Cozzens,” 
he said, “ my school holds that a proper regulation 
of moisture supply is essential to the production of 
high-quality grains. In the laboratory where I con- 
duct my experiments in Washington I have made 
the attempt to produce conditions of aridity, but this 
[ 220 ] 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

experience here only serves to show me how futile the 
attempt was. You can’t put the varied conditions of 
outdoor life into a glass box. If my time were unlim- 
ited, I could show you practically just what I mean. 
I should plant various grains, and try the effect of the 
varying quantities of water, and also more or less 
saline water, to determine the nutritive value obtained 
by more or less moisture.” 

“ I like that idea,” said Cozzens ; “ it’s practical.” 

“ I am going to see the advisory board when I go 
home, and see if something cannot be done through the 
Department of Agriculture to establish a desert labo- 
ratory here in Sahuaro. Even when we protect the 
ground crops from actual rain, the amount of moisture 
in the air defeats the end of the more delicate experi- 
ments.” 

“ I thought you said such a laboratory was needed 
in the University, instead of here,” Cozzens said, puz- 
zled. 

“ Better transfer the site of the university here,” 
answered Abendroth, only half serious, and unaware 
of the appeal which had been made to the big mine 
owner. “ I don’t think it could do worse than in the 
present buildings, and here is the purest condition of 
aridity for laboratory work.” 

“ Well, come, let us have a little music now,” pro- 
posed Mrs. Holt. “ Go ahead. Yucca, and light the 
fire in the other room, where the piano is. If I’m cold 
[221 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


I don’t pretend to enjoy anyone’s playing, I don’t 
care who it is. This tampering with nature,” she 
added in an aside to Lispenard, whom she made her 
crony, “ is ridiculous. Leave things to the Lord. I’ve 
done so all my life.” 

‘‘ Even to your religion,” he rejoined slyly. 

“ It couldn’t be in safer hands,” she retorted. 
‘‘ The major always advised me to attend the Episco- 
pal church, for he said it wouldn’t interfere with either 
my politics or my religion.” She enjoyed the little 
fling at him, and went chuckling down the hall to the 
parlour, where her cousin had hastened to light 
the fire. 

Abendroth remained only long enough to have a 
cigar and a glass of wine, and hear a little of the 
music; then he took his departure. He had further 
work to do before he went to bed, and he always wrote 
a detailed account of the day’s adventure to his wife, 
who was an invalid. This night, however, he was not 
allowed the rest of his evening. Cozzens was insistent 
that both he and Lispenard should come up to his 
room above the bank building for a talk. 

The evening had convinced the frontiersman that 
there might be something in the proposed university, 
after all. He admired Lispenard none the less because 
he respected Abendroth’s judgment the more. He 
had the greatest confidence in the practical genius of 
the Jews. 


[m] 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


“ Of course,” said Cozzens, after he explained 
why he wished to see them both, “ it has been in my 
mind to build a church.” 

Abendroth, when he saw the value his words might 
really have, brought a perfect avalanche of arguments 
to bear upon Cozzens’s indecision. Where w^ould he 
find in the town the congregation to fill a denomina- 
tional church But a university would be the magnet 
to draw people from all over the Territory, if not from 
the East itself. But it was not until he showed that 
politics must enter into the scheme if the site were to be 
changed, that Cozzens really gave in. He had mixed 
much in politics, and the idea fascinated him at 
once. He felt budding within himself a new and ex- 
panding interest. Lispenard had placed the ideal side 
before him, but it was the acumen of the Jewish sci- 
entist which suddenly made practical Yucca’s dream 
of beauty. 

Abendroth’s soft, melancholy brown eyes glowed 
behind his spectacles, and he kept passing his large, 
sensitive hand nervously over his black beard as he 
talked. 

The three finally parted at midnight, and Lispenard 
walked home alone, almost dizzy with his solemn happi- 
ness. He had gone out without locking the door, and 
he had no sooner crossed the threshold than he had an 
instinct that there was someone else in the house. He 
dismissed the idea as absurd, but yet he could not rid 
[ 223 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

himself of this feeling of a second person in the house 
with him. He lighted the lamp on his desk, and looked 
around the large room. It was undisturbed. Some 
small change he had left on the tray which held his 
pens and sealing-wax was still there. His nervous- 
ness was mortifying to him, for it was making out of 
his home a place which creaked and whispered. He 
decided not to go to bed immediately, but to write to 
his wife. The natural longing of the man in him 
found vent at last and he begged her to come home 
to him. He wanted her to share with him the joy 
of having such a man as Abendroth with them, and he 
desired the sweetness of her sympathy in the uni- 
versity project. Twice, while writing, he laid down 
his pen and looked around, thinking that someone 
stood behind him. At last he rose and went into the 
next room, as though drawn irresistibly. 

Adele lay on the bed asleep. One hand was under 
her cheek; her dusky hair was disordered and her 
little travelling hat and veil were tossed on the bed be- 
side her. She had not changed her black gown, and 
her valise was on the floor. She looked like some 
stranger who had crept into a deserted house to rest 
a while before continuing her way. He saw her quite 
distinctly, although the only light was that which 
came from the adjoining room. He longed to kiss her, 
but dared not, as though the silence were of her own 
choosing and he must not break it. His heart was 
[224 1 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


beating heavily. Yet as he hesitated she woke with 
a start and rose quickly to her feet, staring at him in 
the maze of the half-awakened sleeper. 

“ Have you come back to me.^ ” he said. “ Oh, 
Adele, Adele ! ” 

In the dimness of their room she was in his arms, 
sobbing with joy. 

At last he drew her out into the lamplight of the 
other room, that he might see her better. 

“ This isn’t my wife. This is some girl,” he in- 
sisted. 

Her colour rose with her delight. Then suddenly 
she had both hands on his shoulders, and was crying 
out : “ Theodore, you have been ill ! ” 

It was long before he could convince her of his pres- 
ent health. He said nothing of the fight at Campi’s, 
but reserved the tale for some future time. He wished 
now only to hear of her. 

“ Why did you not come for me ? ” he asked. “ I 
was only across the street.” 

“ I thought so,” she answered ; “ but I was afraid.” 

“ Afraid ! ” he echoed. 

“ Why, yes, dear ; because of that five hundred dol- 
lars I took. I started home from Southbury in such 
good spirits, and was so eager to meet you ; and then, 
all at once, I realised what an awful thing I did when I 
asked Jarvis Trent for that money.” 

“ Nonsense,” he said. 

[ 225 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ And the nearer home I got, the bigger that five 
hundred dollars grew, until I was sure everyone in 
Sahuaro must know about it. You know how things 
do leak out. No one saw me when I got out with the 
other passengers. I hurried home, and found you 
away, and the house was dark, and it seemed to me I 
wasn’t welcome.” 

“ Do you want to make your old Theodore cry ? ” 
he asked. 

“ I waited in the dark such a long time, and then 
lay down for a little while, I was so tired. I thought I 
could go back to the boys if you didn’t want me,” she 
endfed timidly. 

He thought how she had lain on the bed, still in her 
travelling dress, her hat and veil near by, as if she 
were a stranger who had crept into an empty house 
to sleep before continuing the journey. He saw the 
pathos of her departure, the still deeper pathos of her 
unwelcomed return into the dark house. He rose and 
brought her the letter he had commenced. “ It is 
finished now, and delivered, my dearest,” he said sol- 
emnly. “ I don’t believe any woman ever answered a 
summons home sooner.” 

She read it through with delight. “ I knew you 
wanted me, even if I did borrow that five hundred dol- 
lars,” she said, then glanced at the letter again, and 
added : “You don’t mean to say that horrid old Mrs. 
Holt is visiting Yucca Armes. I wouldn’t have missed 
[ 226 ] 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


seeing her for worlds. I can actually get a whiff of 
her peppermints here across the street.” 

While she prepared supper, scolding a little about 
the condition of the kitchen, as he knew she would, he 
told her of the evening’s great event, but she was too 
absorbed in the happiness of their reunion to appre- 
ciate fully what he was saying. 

“ I didn’t think I would tell you at first, but I guess 
I will,” she said. “ I don’t like Southbury any more. 
Oh, it was awful ! Everyone seemed so timid to me, 
and afraid to speak his mind, unless it was a moral 
question on which they all agreed ; and they kept ask- 
ing me if I weren’t glad to get back to Southbury, and 
never cared to hear about the West at all. And every- 
one was so rich and stupid.” 

“ I suppose they told you how refined they all were 
in making no vulgar display of their money, didn’t 
they; and how much they did for charity ” sug- 
gested Lispenard, his eyes twinkling. “ I know 
them.” 

“ It was really because they were so stingy ; and 
they were so inhospitable, except in a most formal 
way. But the worst of all was that they bored me, and 
I was wild to get home,” she said. 

She was proud to tell him how well the boys were 
doing in the school, and how fond their uncle was of 
them; and as she, in all the pretty excitement of her 
return, sat opposite him at the table where they had 

[m] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

their little supper, he realised that he, too, was at home 
once more. 

As she talked her dimples went, and her mouth 
drooped. 

“ What is it, dearest ? ” he asked tenderly. 

She had not meant to say a word ; now she could not 
restrain herself. “ I miss the children,” she said. But 
she did not tell him, too, that the sting in her grief 
was his failure to miss them as well. Her home-com- 
ing should not seem a real home-coming without them. 


[ 228 ] 


CHAPTER XVII 


T WO years had passed since that eventful even- 
ing when Abendroth persuaded Cozzens of 
the practical wisdom and beauty of placing a 
university in Sahuaro. The Legislature, in consid- 
eration of the endowment that was promised, voted 
to change the site of the University as soon as the 
new buildings should be ready for occupancy. The 
plans which were made followed along the lines sug- 
gested by the drawing Yucca had shown to Lispenard 
on that long-past afternoon in her garden. The 
buildings were to have long corridors facing a large 
court, and the chapel was to be at the head of the main 
entrance to the university. The architectural form 
was in the purest mission style, and nothing could 
have been chosen which would blend more perfectly 
with the peculiar landscape. Its massive style fitted 
in with the mountainous background. Yucca refused 
to accept the water-colour drawing of the plans. 

“ I want you to hang them in your own office,” she 
told him ; “ that is the proper place for them.” 

He hung them instead in his bedroom, for he 
couldn’t bear to conduct business with these plans be- 
fore his eyes. From a financial standpoint, it was 
scarcely reasonable that he should spend the greater 
[ 229 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

part of his life wresting a vast fortune from the State 
only to give it back again. The framed plans hung 
on the bare walls of his bedroom, and he used to sit 
quiet a little while after he came in evenings, studying 
them out, smoking one of his black cigars and finger- 
ing over the gold eagles in his trousers pocket. At 
first he was impatient over the years which must elapse 
before the buildings would be completed, but by de- 
grees the vastness of the work won upon his imagina- 
tion, and he felt the appeal which the building of a 
cathedral must make to those at work upon it, al- 
though they would never see it finished. Mingling 
with the grandeur of the conception was a tenderer 
emotion which he never expressed to anyone. That 
university was being erected for Jim and Tiggy, 
whose photographs remained unchangingly on his bu- 
reau. 

He dug the first spadeful of earth on the site they 
selected, embarrassed by the cheering of his townsmen, 
and when the first building began to rise his content 
and importance knew no bounds. Every evening he 
strolled over to note the progress of the day, and when 
he was away and came back he was always amazed to 
see how little had been done in his absence, and swore 
frightfully. The Agricultural Department at Wash- 
ington had pigeon-holed Abendroth’s appeal for a 
desert laboratory, and Cozzens determined to put it up 
himself after a while. 


[ 230 ] 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


“ I am building my castles in Spain right on my own 
land,” he would say, bringing his powerful fist down 
on the desk in his office. Sometimes he made excuse to 
open the door into his bedroom, which adjoined, and 
show the plans to whosoever came up to conduct busi- 
ness with him. 

He liked to point out the delicacy of the water- 
colour tinting, the vividness the red-tiled roofs would 
give, and the eflPect of the long colonnades about 
the court. The bond of sympathy deepened be- 
tween him and Lispenard during these two years, and 
many a time the thought occurred to the younger man 
that the greatest man the university would ever know 
was its builder. Not the wisest in point of scholarship, 
but great as the makers of a land are great. 

These two years were the happiest in Mrs. Lispen- 
ard’s life, notwithstanding the fact that both of her 
children were away. Her husband had ceased to be 
pathetic to her. Pride in him, that glory of a wife, 
was hers at last. Lispenard’s book had gone a weary 
round of publishers, and he finally ventured to send 
it to one of the richest and most influential houses, 
in sheer desperation. Nothing could have amazed him 
more than did their acceptance of the manuscript, and 
it was published early in the second year. His success 
surprised them all. The reviews were so excellent that 
the publishers decided to bring out an English edition. 
Jarvis Trent wrote to him his most prized letter of con- 
[231 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


gratulation. Trent forgot the hurt about the cheque 
made out by Cozzens which Lispenard had given him, 
in the newborn warmth of his feeling over his friend’s 
success. He sent him a subscription to a clipping 
bureau, and wrote that he had taken out a second sub- 
scription himself, that he might not miss any of the 
reviews. 

“ Trent was always the best and most loyal fellow in 
the world,” cried Lispenard, touched by the letter. 

“ Is this his handwriting.? ” asked Miss Armes, who 
happened to be in the room when he read it. She 
picked up the envelope and glanced at the address. 

“ Yes,” he said. ‘‘ Would you like to hear the re- 
view which he enclosed from the Press? ” 

As he read, Mrs. Lispenard happened to look up 
and saw her guest’s eyes fixed upon her husband’s un- 
conscious face with such a look of passionate wistful- 
ness that her own heart almost stopped beating for a 
moment, as if something she had long dreaded had 
actually come to pass at last. 

Lispenard put down the review with a sigh of hu- 
mourous regret. “ All good things must end,” he said 
pleasantly. “ I would it were longer.” 

“ You are getting very vain,” Adele told him. She 
stopped sewing, for her fingers were trembling. 
Months had passed without any stirring of the old 
jealousy. Now, all in a brief moment, it flamed up 
more fiercely than ever. 

[ 232 ] 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


Miss Armes laid down the envelope she had been 
holding, and rose. “ I must go. I am really tired. I 
think I walked too far this afternoon.” She had not 
seen either of them at the post-office, and so had 
brought up their mail along with hers. “ It is so early, 
Mr. Lispenard, that I shan’t want you to go home with 
me.” 

“ She is afraid to trust herself alone with him,” 
Adele thought bitterly, and she said good-night to 
her without meeting her eyes. When she was once 
more alone with her husband her tragic mood found 
expression. “ Sometimes, Theodore, I have been 
afraid our happiness is too perfect to last. I know 

you think me foolish, but ” 

But what ^ ” he asked, as she hesitated. 

She was ashamed to say. 

“No one can take your heaven from you,” he added, 
with his subtle and delicate smile ; “ you hold it in 
yourself.” And after a moment he continued : “ Some- 
times I think that if either of us had thought we were 
going to die, we would have been eager to say much, 
to exact promises ” 

“ No, dear,” she interrupted, with simple jus- 
tice ; “ you never would have exacted promises, but 
I would have. You were larger than I, Theo- 
dore.” 

“ That was because you loved more,” he hastened 
to answer ; then caught himself up, laughing. “ Oh ! 
[ 233 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


what have I said ? I meant only to be gallant ; that it 
was I who always loved you the more.” 

“ Now you take all the credit,” she retorted, her 
dimples showing again. She could not long remain 
sullenly jealous. Her nature was too happy. “What 
did you start to say.^ ” 

“ That we would have been eager to exact promises 
and assurances, but now I feel we have reached that 
perfect understanding which needs no words.” 

It was her lover speaking. 

Lispenard looked forward to the establishment of 
the university at Sahuaro as to his emancipation. A 
chair of philosophy was endowed by Cozzens, and he 
was to fill it; and he looked forward to the practical 
fulfilment of his ideal, which was the teaching of young 
men. He hoped to instruct them that the true Church 
should be a higher university, where mature men could 
embrace the deep philosophy of their own age, after 
the preparation their college had given them in study 
of the wisdom of the ancients. If they would find the 
teaching of the classics of permanent value in their 
lives, they must ever be unwilling to leave them when 
the doors of their alma mater closed. He offered to 
prepare young men for college, and three pupils ac- 
cepted his invitation. One was an Indian, docile to 
learn and reciting, parrot-like, the faulty Latin 
taught him by the old mission priest, who had adopted 
him as a son, and whose darling he was. Another was 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


a young man in his own parish, illiterate, but of sound 
judgment and dogged perseverance; and the third 
was a lad who had been sent West for his 
health. He had traditions of greater culture than 
Lispenard’s parishoner, but he had less vigour. His 
association with these young men awakened in him his 
first real longing to see his own sons. He saw almost 
too clearly, for inspiration to teach them, the limita- 
tions of the former : the Indian, bound by the religious 
tenets of the Roman Catholic Church ; the calculation 
for material success as the reward of intellectual labour 
in his second pupil ; but this last was more endurable 
to him than the intellectual thinness of the third 
student. His pride was touched by the quality of his 
own sons, as it was revealed in their letters home, and 
he began to see that they might comprehend his ideals 
more than many others. 

He thought, with mingled humour and contrition, 
that his affection followed the inductive system; he 
was enthusiastic for many young men before that en- 
thusiasm centred in love, quick and personal, for his 
own children. The prospective removal of the site of 
the University had been widely advertised through the 
beauty of the plans, and also his book ; for his pub- 
lishers had stated that he was to have the chair of 
philosophy. 

The great romance of his life remained — his pas- 
sion for the desert. To its influence he attributed the 
[ 2S5 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

amazing success of his book. He knew that his phi- 
losophy was creative ; he had caught the boldness of 
the desert ; the critics remarked a kind of radiance in 
his pages; they were written in a land of sunshine: 
many reviews spoke of the force in the book ; it was 
due to the eternal struggle for existence in that coun- 
try, for only by fighting his environment had he main- 
tained his intellectual interests ; the charm of the style 
was said to be a fault in that it distracted the reader 
from the sense; did not mirages invite, and beauty 
which had no substance weave illusions in the des- 
ert air.? 

He had something of the poet in him, but he was 
most a philosopher ; and he believed that when the in- 
ventive genius of his country had exhausted its possi- 
bilities the mind of the people would turn to a deeper 
study of the soul. His passion for Miss Armes had 
never returned, but her undeniable beauty made the 
eternal appeal of perfection. 

The bond of loving sympathy strengthened between 
him and Adele. 

“ You keep me sane and wholesome,” he told her, 
and added merrily, “ a proper family man, buying 
shoes and school-books. Never regret that you left 
me, but think of the lesson I learned through your 
absence.” 

“ My going did not change you,” she said humbly ; 
“ I should love to think that it did — ^that I could have 
[ 236 ] 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

influenced you so much ; but your book was written be- 
fore I went.” She would not judge except by worldly 
success or failure. 

He took her hand. “ My dear wife, you will never 
know what I mean when I say that you are moral and I 
naturally unmoral, and that I am trying very humbly 
to learn of you.” 

She stopped him with a kiss. “ I am not nearly as 
good as you, Theodore. It makes me indignant to hear 
you say such things about yourself. Yes, it does, dear. 
I mean it.” 

“ Didn’t I say you would not understand ? ” he in- 
sisted charmingly. 

Content as he was with her and his work, the long- 
ing for his sons’ return increased within him. Adele’s 
love for them was desire for their welfare and her own 
happiness in them, but he was eager to have them for- 
ward his ideals. 

Jim’s letters were sturdy, exact, and always enthu- 
siastic. “ There is no quality I prize more than en- 
thusiasm,” Lispenard would say. “ It is youth 
itself.” 

He laughed over his younger son’s occasional, vari- 
able letters. “ Tiggy has no enthusiasm,” he said, 
“ but he has personal genius, and that is the gift of 
the gods.” 

Both of the boys wrote naively of their pride in the 
notice their father’s book excited. At the bottom of 
[ 237 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

each of Jim’s letters was a conscientious postscript, 
telling the number of pages he had read since last writ- 
ing, but Tiggy wrote triumphantly that he read the 
whole book through in one evening before bedtime. 
Their school closed about the middle of June, but Mrs. 
Lispenard did not know the exact date on which they 
would arrive. She had written to her brother not to 
tell her when they were to start, for she would worry 
all the time they would be on the train. Nothing she 
had ever done had amused Cozzens and her husband 
more than this determination on her part. 

“ She keeps us absolutely unsettled by it,” Lispen- 
ard confided, in a burst of laughter, to his friend, as 
the two men sat alone. ‘‘ If I knew when the boys were 
expected, I could compose myself to work evenings un- 
til the very hour of their arrival. But now she wants 
us to be hanging around the plaza every night for a 
week.” 

“ She’s as young as Jim,” answered Cozzens, in his 
husky, velvety voice. “ She’s got to have something 
to amuse her.” 

Mrs. Lispenard, finding that neither of the two men 
was inclined to yield to her pers,uasions to meet the 
train every night, sou^cht Yucca for companionship, 
and took her down to the plaza with her. She dressed 
herself in her prettiest gown, and started out every 
evening after supper, in the gayest spirits, to call for 
her friend. She might have been a girl going to meet 
[ 238 ] 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


her lover. Her jealousy of her companion was always 
spasmodic, and Yucca was restored to her fullest confi- 
dence and affection once more. She made no secret of 
her anticipation of the coming winter, when the chang- 
ing of the University to Sahuaro would bring more 
society into the little town. 

Lispenard noticed that wherever his wife went she 
brought brightness. She was not particularly inter- 
ested in the second book he was writing, and she quite 
neglected him in her absorption over the boys’ home- 
coming; but if ever anyone were her own excuse for 
being, surely Adele was that. 

Although it was early June, the summer was over in 
the desert, which lay scorched and brown to the sun’s 
hot rays. Even the cacti and mesquite looked parched, 
and the sunsets were gorgeous because of the heat and 
the constant dust in the air. 

“ I have a feeling they may have started early, be- 
fore the school closed, and will be here to-night,” Mrs. 
Lispenard remarked as they went down together one 
evening. For all the heat of the day, the twilight was 
cool, and Miss Armes had drawn about her shoulders a 
pale pink shawl. 

“ I have not seen you wear that for a long time,” 
said her friend. “ Blue is lovely on you, but I think I 
like pink best.” 

She smiled. 

“ I know you don’t care,” Adele continued ; “ and 

[239 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

that’s why you irritate me so. It makes you too supe- 
rior not to care that you are beautiful.” 

“ I do not know that it has ever availed me much,” 
Miss Armes answered, her hand slipped through her 
companion’s arm ; but the words were not uttered with 
either bitterness or resentment. Though the air was 
cool, and she had brought her shawl, the sleeves of her 
thin white gown ended just above the elbows. 

They reached the plaza as the Overland rushed into 
the station, and Mrs. Lispenard hurried forward. The 
boys were not on the train, and she looked around for 
Miss Armes, to join her again. But she had disap- 
peared. She went over to the post-office and w^aited 
until the mail was distributed; then went back to the 
depot again and asked Haydon if he had seen her. 

“ How queer for her to run away from me ! ” she 
said. 

Haydon was mysterious. “ I suppose you know 
somebody’s come,” said he. “ Now, Mis’ Lispenard, 
you know you know.” 

She felt herself grow faint. “ And I missed them ! ” 

“ Oh, I don’t mean the boys,” he said ; “ I mean 
somebody else.” 

She went away convinced that he was jesting, for 
Haydon had become more than ever a privileged char- 
acter. Halfway home she noticed a man pass into the 
light of the street-lamp. She knew the tall figure and 
the quick step at once. It was Jarvis Trent. She was 
[^ 40 ] 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


about to call out to him, in her surprise and delight, to 
wait for her, when he crossed to the opposite side of the 
street. She watched him until he entered Miss Armes’s 
gate, and then hastened home to tell Theodore of the 
amazing arrival. 




[Ml] 


CHAPTER XVIII 


J ARVIS TRENT, as he stood at the doorway, 
heard the sound of the piano within the house. 
He raised the knocker and rapped. The music 
ceased; there was the sound of a light step, and then 
the door opened, and he saw her standing on the 
threshold, in the dim light from the inner room, the 
long hall dark behind her. 

“ I don’t see who it is,” she said, as he took her hand, 
involuntarily extended. 

It seemed to him that they stood long in that palpi- 
tant half-darkness, conscious of the recognition her 
yielding fingers gave, while her cool voice denied that 
she knew him. 

“ Is it you, Mr. Cozzens ? ” 

The masculine directness of his own nature was 
amused by her finesse, and his whole being warmed to 
the helpless yielding of her hand in his. Not know 
him, when her fingers clung and trembled ! And all at 
once he knew his journey ended in triumph. 

“ No,” he answered, stepping inside ; “ it is I.” 

“ When did you come ? ” she asked, and he saw that 
she faltered. 

They went into the parlour, and she sat down on the 
piano-stool, facing him, and he remembered that she 
[ 242 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

sat there when he called on her two years ago to 
say good-bye. He had reached her home, stern with 
conflicting emotions, of shyness and longing and self- 
distrust, and these had gone when he greeted her. But 
the joy which had succeeded vanished so quickly he 
could scarcely believe in its reality. Could her fingers 
have been warm, when her eyes were now so cold and 
her face so pale ? The parlour itself seemed damp. He 
had forgotten the chill of adobe walls when the night 
comes on and a fire is not lighted. He found himself 
speaking formally to her, making the platitudinous re- 
mark that time was an illusion, and that she had not 
changed in two years. 

‘‘ I don’t think one is apt to change much in two 
years, if one has neither illness nor trouble,” she an- 
swered. 

He was looking at her arms, slender like those of a 
very young girl, and white, even against her white 
dress. Their slenderness, the little lace ruffles above 
the round elbows, the gentle and lovely contour of her 
head, inspired him with indescribable tenderness. 

“ You have been fortunate,” he said. 

“ I do not know,” she rejoined. “ I have sometimes 
thought that people are more fortunate if they have 
some trouble.” 

“ You think that happiness would have some relish 
then,” he said, his strong face lighting with his infre- 
quent smile. “ What have you been doing these two 
[ 243 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

years ? Lispenard wrote me that you were largely re- 
sponsible in getting the university here.” 

“ You have not seen the plans yet, have you.^ ” she 
asked, colouring with pleasure. ‘‘ Mr. Cozzens has 
them framed and hung in his room. They have been 
our chief interest. But we have missed the boys. I 
think I have wished to see them almost as much as Mr. 
and Mrs. Lispenard. It has been lonely.” 

He wondered that one who had so sweet a self for 
company should ever be lonely. “ Yucca,” he said, 
leaning slightly forward, his hands on the arms of his 
chair, “ do you know why I have come ? ” 

She did not answer him. Her eyes widened watch- 
fully, and he was irresistibly reminded of the first time 
he had ever seen her, and the strangeness of the im- 
pression she made on him when he looked up to see 
the pale oval of her face beyond the green globe of 
the lamp in his friend’s home. He saw now that her 
watchfulness sprang from timidity. 

He drew from the inside pocket of his coat an en- 
velope, and took out a paper closely written on one 
side. “ Why did you send me this ? ” he asked. 

She folded her hands together tight in her lap, and 
the white lace on her breast stirred with her quickened 
breathing. 

He was too earnest of their future happiness to be 
compassionate of her timidity now. He sat, character- 
istically a judge, still leaning forward in his intent- 
[ 244 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

ness, the stern, level lines of his mouth and eyes im- 
pressing themselves upon her ; his head looked massive, 
and she noticed that his hair was more thickly touched 
with grey. 

“Was it because you thought I had defied your 
charm, and that you wished to show me how even Lis- 
penard, whose judgment you knew I was apt to value 
above my own, had succumbed to your fascination ? ” 
He saw that his words hurt her, and that she was too 
proud to make any denial. He softened. Even a shy- 
ness came into his own level eyes at the words he next 
spoke. “ Was it sent in a romantic, even foolish, mood. 
Yucca, as we all sent valentines when we were young ” 
“ Yes,” she answered. The spoken word would have 
brought him to her feet, but her gesture withheld him. 
All her sweet blushes, all her inviting timidity, was 
gone, lost in a look of pride so great that he was ap- 
palled. For the first time he saw her likeness to the 
fierce soldier whose portrait hung on the wall above 
the piano back of her. It was a spiritual, not a phys- 
ical, likeness. “ But a romantic and foolish mood is a 
passing mood. It does not last nearly two years,” she 
said. 

“ Do you mean to punish me because I did not come 
sooner .f’” he asked gently. She would not reply, and 
after a moment he continued : “ Won’t you come and 
sit down here beside me on the lounge? I feel that I 
cannot talk to you so, across the room.” 

[245 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

She rose, but, instead of crossing to him, took the 
candle from the mantle, and, stooping, lighted the fire, 
which was laid and ready. 

“ I did not realise how cold it was,” she said. She 
half knelt, waiting to see if the fire would burn ; the 
melting wax from her carelessly held candle dropped 
on the hearth. The red flame leapt up gloriously, 
with such an effect of leaping, all-embracing light 
that for a second she seemed almost transparent, she 
was so white. 

“ The sonnet refers to you as a goddess,” he said ; 
“ but I see in you a household spirit, the woman whose 
love lights the fire around which the family life cir- 
cles.” 

She rose and looked at him, smiling, as though the 
warmth of the leaping flame had left some faint re- 
flection of its ardour on her spirit. 

‘‘ Are you laughing at me ? ” he asked, smiling too, 
not less appreciative than she of the clumsiness of his 
compliment. 

She drew up a rocking-chair and sat near him, look- 
ing into the fire. He had a blessed sense that no one 
would come to interrupt them, that he had her to him- 
self. The slightly parted hair on her forehead had the 
tint of pale, shining gold which he had noticed in chil- 
dren. She was so exquisite, so entrancing a woman 
that he felt the hopelessness of ever really winning her. 
He could not fathom her charm, but it seemed to him 
[ 246 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

that it lay in her elemental freshness. Delicate as she 
was, he yet saw that she possessed in herself the femi- 
nine counterpart of those qualities which he remem- 
bered made Cozzens so big and masculine a man. 
Each had an unhampered personality. There had 
been nothing shallow or contracted in their environ- 
ment. 

With a man’s desire to lay his life before the woman 
of his supreme passion, choosing her alone to be his 
judge, so now he told her of his early struggles and 
ambitions, his youthful love for Adele, and his meeting 
with her again there in the desert. He did not conceal 
that he believed it was for her sake he had never 
married, although he never grudged Lispenard his 
happiness. He now regarded her as though she were 
his sister, and, except for that first boyish infatuation, 
he doubted if his love had ever been any deeper than 
it was that moment. 

“ No,” she said ; “ you never loved her as well as 
your own ambition. You will never love any woman as 
much as that.” 

“Do you know me as well as that.?” he asked. 
“ Then you do not know me at all. Listen to me. 
Yucca. I was never jealous of Lispenard in those 
days. I felt he deserved her. But when I read that 
sonnet he wrote to you it maddened me. I ceased even 
to think of Adele and to resent it for her sake. I used 
to take out that sonnet, and read it over and over, al- 
[ 247 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

ways tempted to destroy it, but constrained because 
you were in it. Every line breathed you. I could not 
even be sorry for my friend. I could not stand the 
thought of his writing that. Don’t you see, my dar- 
ling, it was not all jealousy. He was a married man. 
He had no right to see you in that way.” It was the 
first time in his life that he had ever uttered a critical 
word of Lispenard. “ When I said that foolish thing, 
a moment since, about your being the fireside spirit, do 
you suppose I did not know I was foolish It was be- 
cause I saw so well what he saw in you that I resented 
it. I wanted you to be something different to me, dif- 
ferent from what any other man in looking at you 
could see.” 

“ Why did you never write to me, then ? ” she asked 
him. “ Why did you stay away two years ? ” 

“ It was because I still clung to the thought that I 
loved Adele. I felt that in yielding to 3^ou I gave way 
to fascination without love. You were the opposite 
of that conventional ideal woman for whom she stood 
to me. Don’t misunderstand me.” 

She was wounded. “ And when I sent you the poem 

you thought I was only vain — scheming ” 

“ I tried to think that,” he admitted miserably. 

“ I did not want you to forget me,” she said. Sim- 
ple as her words were, her pride made the incident re- 
mote, as though her emotion in regard to it had long 
since passed away. 


[ 248 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

“ Why did you think I sent it? ” she asked him next. 
“ You did not know my handwriting.” 

“ No,” he answered; “ but I knew Lispenard never 
sent it to me. A man is not apt to send such a thing 
to another man. And then, too, he would have known 
my address more definitely than just the name of the 
city.” 

If you love me now,” she said, “ it is because you 
have cared so much for him.” 

“ I don’t follow you,” he said, distressed. “ What 
is there in common with my friendship for him and my 
love for you? ” 

“ Because all that is best in me I owe to him. It is 
his thoughts I express, and his ideals,” she told him. 

His ideals,” echoed Trent dully. He passed his 
hand across his eyes, as though to see clearer. 

“ Yes,” she continued; “ for I met him when I was 
very young, and in all the years afterward I never 
heard him utter one unkind or prejudiced word, nor 
be less than he is now.” 

“ I know what he is,” Trent interrupted, with a 
curiously bitter smile; “you need not tell me of his 
charm.” 

“ My father cared nothing for books, and here in 
this desert I might have developed into a shallow and 
ignorant woman, had it not been for him. All the in- 
tellectual life I have ever had since I came West has 
been through my association with him.” 

[ 249 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ Do you remember that night on the desert, when I 
accused you of loving him? AVas I right then? ” he 
said. He braced himself against the pain of her re- 
ply. Who had ever withstood Lispenard? 

She looked straight into the fire, and he watched her, 
knowing she would answer him truly, conscious all the 
time of how he loved her shining hair, her arms bare to 
the elbows, not because her hair was gold, nor her arms 
white, but for the reason that she was expressed in 
them. He remembered that he once thought she was a 
woman to make men dream, not one to waken desire. 

He was not prepared for the reply she made. “ I 
never knew until that night when you asked me.” 

“ Until I ^sked you ? ” he repeated, amazed. Then, 
“ You mean that time in the desert when we were alone 
and I accused you of caring for Lispenard? ” 

“ I thought I cared for him,” she said wistfully. “ I 
did not want to do wrong; but Mrs. Lispenard never 
seemed very happy, and I even felt their marriage had 
not been for the best, and that in some future life, 
perhaps ” 

She paused, and he was touched by the extreme 
youthfulness of her confession. And suddenly he 
seemed to see the situation in its entirety ; Lispenard, 
an idealist, a poet, making the girl’s beauty symboli- 
cal; she, full of romance and very young, and Adele, 
jealous — jealous of what? That Lispenard was a 
poet! 


[ 250 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


Yet it was his friend with whom he had no patience, 
although his mood was all gentleness toward the woman 
he loved. It would have been impossible for him, in 
her situation, to have remained in the same town with a 
person he was in honour bound not to love. He could 
not have dreamed the years away, as he saw she had 
done, and never face the moral issue. But a woman, 
in her innocence mingling her religious feeling with 
that of her love, could be tranquil in such a position. 
Her thoughts of love would be as innocent as her 
prayers. 

“ If my question could put your feeling for him to 
the test, then you never loved him,” he said. “ But 
how could you meet Adele day after day, if you 
thought you cared for him ? It is that which is not like 
you. I saw he cared for you.” 

It was she who was now distressed. “ I think I could 
meet her because I never wanted to do anything to 
wound her. I loved her, too, and Jim and Tiggy — I 
loved them all, but I admired him most.” And she 
raised her eyes from the fire to his, blushing a little, 
and very sweet. “ Perhaps I never loved him best, 
after all. Perhaps it was because I admired him and 
was so grateful to him. Why, do you blame me? You 
have always cared for him, too.” She was carrying 
the war into the enemy’s camp with no regard for 
reason. 

Yes,” she insisted, “ you have always cared for 

[ 251 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


him, too.” It was not only his look, but a memory, 
which caused her blush to deepen. Could she tell him 
of her shame that afternoon when Lispenard had kissed 
her hand.^ For her own sake, she longed to, that 
he might understand fully her disillusionment, 
but she could not expose their friend’s weakness 
to him. 

And she looked at him, her eyes bright with the fire- 
light and with laughter. “ I love him as much as ever, 
because I never loved him more.” 

Her rarest mood was upon her. She looked at him 
now as she had that wonderful desert evening when 
she evaded his embrace and fled, wild and delicate, 
across the yellow sands. 

And the pale pink shawl, which had slipped from 
her, like a mantle from a young goddess, lay now 
across the piano-stool, one end dragging to the 
floor. 

Was she a woman to make men dream? She was a 
woman supremely to be desired. The passion of that 
sunset hour with her in the desert thrilled him again. 
He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her 
again and again, but she was so delicate he dared not 
startle her. But he leant a little forward, and took her 
hand. “ I have walked about the streets of my city, 
fancying, even when I deemed it most foolish that you 
could love me, where I should build our home when we 
were married.” 


[ 252 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

“ No,” she cried, frightened, “ you must never ask 
me to leave the desert.” 

He was stunned. That thought had never crossed 
his mind. “ I have a fair income,” he told her, “ but 
it is dependent wholly upon my law practice. But 
here I should be a poor man, unable to support you as 
I would wish to.” He pleaded long and well, but she 
would not yield. 

“ You tell me that you cannot leave your city, that 
your friends are there, your law practice, your polit- 
ical interests. But what of me ? ” she asked him. 
“ Do you think I care nothing about the future of 
Sahuaro.f^ Is my home not here, the home my father 
built.? ” 

“ I could not make a living for you here,” he re- 
peated. He still held her hand. In her cold decision, 
that warm touch alone was his comfort. “ See how we 
love each other. Yucca. Our words disagree, but we 
cannot loosen hands. It isn’t worth while for us to 
contend. You are blind, indeed, if you think all 
beauty is contained here. Have you ever been much in 
the woods ? ” 

“No; but when I have, I have always wanted to 
push the trees away and gain the open spaces,” she 
answered. 

“ It has always been one of my dreams to walk some 
day in the autumn woods with the woman I love,” he 
rejoined. He would have put his arm up around her 
[S53] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

neck and drawn her to him, but she withdrew, shiv- 
ering. 

“You would imprison me!” she cried. “I will 
never marry you unless you stay here. What more do 
I ask of you than you of me.^ ” 

“ A woman follows the man she loves where he can 
best make a home for her,” he answered. “ Oh, my 
dearest, do you not see that between you and me, you 
must be the one to yield. It is not in me to give way. 
It would break me.” 

His appeal left her cold. 

“ I want little. You have come back to us here. 
Oh! stay long enough, and you will never wish to go 
away again.” The candles on the mantel were flicker- 
ing low ; the fire had fallen into embers ; her eyes were 
bright. She was a sorceress tempting him to give up 
his manhood, to let atrophy his ambition, and live a 
parasite on her in this vast desert. A chill ran through 
him. He rose to go. Then his longing for her actual 
touch, the longing, day and night for two years, which 
had brought him there this evening, found expression. 

“ If you will not marry me, nor kiss me, will you not 
let me hold you in my arms for one moment, and feel 
your cheek against mine ? ” 

She, too, had risen. “ Yes,” she whispered. 

He put his arm about her, and she rested a moment 
in his embrace, her cheek touching his. But so shadowy 
was the caress, so faint to his ardent hope, that she 
[ 254 ] 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

seemed almost less real than the portrait of her father, 
touched to sudden life by a leaping tongue of flame 
from the dying fire. 

He found himself walking alone on the street, 
shaken with emotion, utterly unnerved. In the East 
spring was still in the air, though the month was June, 
and its witchery had induced vagrant moods, and whis- 
pered to him Lispenard’s loved phrase, “ The adven- 
ture of life.” And he had given way to his longing 
and come, starting almost on the hour of his resolve. 
His thoughts drove him on now past the plaza, into the 
open desert. All his doubts returned. His old dis- 
trust of her came back, and in contrast to her there 
rose reproachfully his old ideal, that visionary woman, 
not unlike Adele, tender, yielding, following humbly 
the man she loved to the home he made for her. He 
recalled Adele’s father, that judicious scholar who 
had so influenced his own young manhood. Had not 
that memory been another tie binding him to faithful- 
ness to her.f^ What could he ever have had in common 
with the fierce old soldier of the portrait? His first in- 
stinct, warning him not to yield to the girl’s fascina- 
tion, had been right. His jealousy of Lispenard was 
reawakened. Did he not know of the fascination he 
held for women? And was he, Jarvis Trent, to give 
up his profession, his means of livelihood, to come and 
settle in the desert and be one of Lispenard’s satel- 
lites? 


[ 255 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ I will give her up first,” he told himself, looking 
about that dreary waste, unbroken save by the moun- 
tains, ragged and black against the glittering sky, and 
the sleeping town behind him. Yet, even as he stood 
there, the majesty of the scene won upon him, and he 
knew the claim the desert made upon her; he, too, felt 
the immensities. The woods and hills to which he 
would fain take her were as tales that are told. 


[ 266 ] 


CHAPTER XIX 


W HEN he awoke in the morning he could 
scarcely realise that he had been away so 
long, for all was unchanged in the bright 
sunlight. He had slept so soundly that the morning 
train had come and gone without disturbing him. He 
dressed and went downstairs, and exchanged a friendly 
nod with Hay don on his way over to Campi’s. 

“ So,” said Madame Campi, greeting him over her 
crocheting, ‘‘ you have come back to us.” 

When he went up to call on the Lispenards he was 
delighted to find them still at their own breakfast. 
“How is this.'^” he asked, shaking hands. “You 
didn’t use to have breakfast so late.” 

“ It’s our lunch,” said Mrs. Lispenard, amused. 

He looked at his watch. It was after eleven. “ I 
forget time in this country of yours until it is gone 
by.” He did not say when he came, nor did they ask 
him. 

Lispenard was too tactful to show his guest that he 
knew where he had been the night before, and Adele, 
too, with a secret sigh for her old lover’s fickleness, re- 
sisted the temptation of enquiring how he had left their 
fair neighbour. 

She invited him back to supper in the evening, and 

[ 257 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


he spent the rest of the day in anticipation, hoping 
that she would invite Miss Armes as well. And he was 
not disappointed. Both she and Cozzens were there. 
The big mine owner had long since forgotten his re- 
sentment and insolent stare, and welcomed Trent back 
with all the heartiness of which he was capable. 

After tea they walked over to the new university 
buildings, which Lispenard could see from his window 
as he sat at his desk. Cozzens, eager to point out every 
budding architectural beauty, did not allow Trent a 
moment with Miss Armes. But he was so glad to have 
her near him that he did not mind having his attention 
absorbed by Cozzens. She had refused him, and still 
he had no thought of leaving her. It did not even en- 
ter his head that he might. She seemed to be unaltera- 
bly his, and had become the love of his life, as real to 
him as his own existence. Neither did he intend to 
make his home in the desert. 

The air was full of the colours of sunset, and this 
flush of twilight bathed the little party and gave a 
look of illusion even to the buildings, making them 
look ancient, and transforming the solemn row of the 
giant cacti growing about them into ruined Greek col- 
umns. 

Once, as they wandered about, Trent turned to as- 
sist Yucca up the steps of the uncompleted building, 
and the touch of her hand thrilled him so that he was 
amazed at his own ardour. He was fain to kiss her, 
[ 258 ] 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


unmindful of her blushes, before the others. And he 
loved her better for the look of pride she gave him, 
as if she divined and resented his unfulfilled inten- 
tion. 

“ I can’t help believing that in this land of beauty 
will be born the noblest architecture of our country,” 
said Lispenard, laying his hand affectionately on his 
friend’s arm. “ See, the very cacti are prophets, and 
rise like the shafts and columns of a temple ! Sculp- 
turing and painting are but the handmaidens to this 
nobler art. They speak the individual artist, but a 
building unfolds the national character.” 

Trent anticipated being Yucca’s companion on the 
way home, but Cozzens forestalled him, and walked on 
ahead with her himself. His powerful figure, in its 
tan suit, looked larger than ever, contrasted to her 
slender form as she walked beside him, yet always with 
the peculiar air of aloofness which marked her bearing. 
She wore the dress of the night before, with its elbow 
sleeves, and over her head a mantilla of Spanish lace. 
Trent recalled how he had once seen her on the desert, 
at this hour, walking leisurely, like a lady in her 
garden. 

Adele was in a mischievous mood. She was not un- 
willing to punish Trent for his faithlessness to herself, 
and so she detained him and Lispenard until the other 
two were well in advance. She insisted upon Trent’s 
getting for her a scarlet cactus flower, and when he 
[ 259 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

finally brought it to her, after some difficulty, she flung 
it away because it had no fragrance. 

“ It smells like the desert,” she said, dimpling at her 
husband. She would never yield to his opinion that 
the desert was beautiful. “ Don’t let’s hurry,” she 
added, teasing Trent ; “ it’s been so long since we three 
were together. Do you think I’ve changed, Jarvey.^ ” 
She seated herself on a rock, and looked up at him, 
smiling. 

“ You are more beautiful than ever,” he retorted, 
with laughing resentment. He could have shaken her, 
for he saw that she guessed his secret. 

“ Don’t spoil her further, Jarvey,” said Lispenard ; 
“ she is vain enough as it is.” He was prying up a 
rock with his walking-stick, and a number of irides- 
cent beetles were running away from under. “ Adele, 
my dear, your husband can make you rich gifts of liv- 
ing jewels, if you will accept them.” 

“ Thank you,” she retorted. “ I can adorn myself 
with them just about as practically as with your 
treasures in heaven which you have turned over to 
me.” 

‘‘ Well, you have at least the adornment of a meek 
and quiet spirit, Adele,” said Trent. 

Lispenard laughed. His eyes were alight with ad- 
miration, and they were bent on his wife. 

She looked away for a second, shy as a girl; then 
rose impulsively and kissed him. It was the first time 
[ 260 ] 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 

she had done so in Trent’s presence. His fickleness 
made her realise afresh her dependence upon Lispen- 
ard. Her fondness for Jarvey had not diminished, but 
she was not yet ready to forgive him. 

“ Theodore, dear,” she cried, linking arms with 
him, “ your little finger is worth Jarvis Trent’s whole 

body. Whatever you are, you are not ” She 

broke off abruptly. “ Oh, the train is nearly due, and 
here we are ! Suppose the boys should come in to- 
night. Theodore, dear, how can you loiter so ? I know 
we’ll be late ! ” 

“ Am I never to hear what I am not.^’ ” he called as 
she ran on ahead of them both. 

And look at the ambiguous position in which I am 
placed,” Trent added. 

But she would not wait to answer, and the two men 
followed her, amused. 

“ I know the boys won’t be here for a couple of days 
yet, at the least,” added Lispenard. “ Look at the 
completed building from this point. It is so simple, 
and yet so admirable in the landscape.” He paused to 
call his friend’s attention to the gum which was exud- 
ing from the cactus stem where Trent picked the 
scarlet flower for Adele. “ See the precaution Nature 
takes against evaporation if a plant is wounded. You 
once said I seemed like a man intoxicated. I am, Jar- 
vey. Out here I have quaffed a ‘ drink divine.’ I am 
never wearied.” 


[261 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


Meanwhile Cozzens had asked his companion sulkily 
if she were going to marry Trent. 

“ No,” she told him. 

His surprise was great. He had braced himself 
manfully to bear the news of her marriage. Cozzens 
was not so ungallant as to deny a woman her choice in 
love. His passion for Yucca was not sufficient to make 
him jealous, and he did not resent Trent’s wooing of 
her, as he had that other incident when Trent had given 
Mrs. Lispenard money to run away from her husband. 
For Cozzens was never to be persuaded that Trent had 
not lent the money knowingly for this very purpose, 
and he was always puzzled by the fact that the two had 
not met later in the East, which would seem the natural 
outcome of their actions. 

Strangely enough. Yucca’s reply did not fill him 
with the gladness it should. She was not going to 
marry Trent. Therefore, she accepted him ; and Coz- 
zens, born rover that he was, with a sweetheart in 
every town like a sailor, experienced a momentary dis- 
may. And, moreover, there was still a certain senora 
in the Capital, a young widow, whose black eyes fas- 
cinated him, and whose white hands played on the 
strings of his heart as skilfully as on her guitar. But 
he distrusted black eyes as much as ever, and he knew 
that the senora had a thought to his fortune, whereas 
Yucca’s eyes were cool and serene, and she had refused 
him and his wealth consistently for years, 

[ 262 ] 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 

“Well, my girl,” he said; “whenever you set the 
day, I’m ready.” 

“ Ready ! ” she echoed ; “ but I am not going to 
marry anyone.” 

She wouldn’t marry Trent ; she wouldn’t marry him. 
Then what did she intend to do.^ He puffed at his 
cigar speculatively. 

She glanced around to see if anyone were near them, 
and lowered her voice. 

“ What made you think Mr. Trent wanted to marry 
me ? ” she asked, full of delight. 

Cozzens gave her a shrewd look. “ Damme, Yucca, 
I believe you’re dead in love with the fellow.” And 
his own spirits rose with a bound. 

“ No, no ! ” she cried. 

“ So you were only fooling when you said you 
weren’t going to marry him. Women are deceiving 
creatures.” And he remembered with suspicion the 
senora’s black eyes. 

“ You don’t understand,” she protested gently, pale 
with the pain the resolution cost her. “ He will not 
come to live here with us, and I will never leave Sa- 
huaro.” 

“ Good Lord ! ” he said ; “ then where’s the sense of 
being in love with him if you don’t intend to marry 
him? I declare. Yucca, you don’t talk like a natural 
woman. I’m astonished at you.” 

She did not answer him, absorbed in her own sense 

[26S] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

of the tragic. She half lifted her pretty white arms, 
bare to the elbow, and let them fall again. Why 
should they have felt empty all the day long because 
Trent last night had drawn them about his neck and 
she found herself in fancy turning her face that their 
lips and not their cheeks might meet. Then her 
father’s pride rose in her superior to the instinctive 
yielding of the woman. Her spirit leapt to this 
matching of wills with her lover. Her beauty was 
pitted against his strength, and she knew that she 
would prevail. 

Cozzens was silent. Yucca had always been more or 
less strange to him, but never as unaccountably so as 
now. He had a sense of renewed freedom and tri- 
umphant conviction that he was getting the best of 
it in this moment when he consigned the final problem 
of her personality to his rival. And the senora’s eyes 
were bright and her handclasp warm, but he was in 
no haste to marry. Yucca’s refusal had given him 
a fresh lease on his bachelor’s existence. He would 
do well by the little girl when she got over her 
quarrel with her lover, and quieted down into mar- 
rying him. She should have a diamond necklace 
for her white neck, and bracelets for her pretty 
arms. 

The boys were not on the Overland that night, and 
after the mail had been distributed the little party 
separated. Mrs. Lispenard and Yucca returned home, 
[ 264 ] 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 

and Cozzens went up to his office to do some work, as 
he was going out of town the next day. 

Lispenard dragged his guest off for a walk alone 
with him, and Trent went reluctantly, unable to get 
even a direct glance from his sweetheart’s eyes as she 
said good-night. 

It was a mild night, and they went out beyond the 
confines of the Indian village, and there Lispenard lay 
down on the warm sands, flat on his back. 

“ Lie down,” he said, “ and look up at the stars.” 

Trent demurred. “ How about scorpions and 
spiders.? ” 

“ Lie down,” cried Lispenard, laughing at him. 
“ ‘ Art thou slave to fear, my soul? Then do a thou- 
sand dangers menace thee.’ ” He raised himself on 
his elbow and glanced about. “ It’s safe enough, Jar- 
vey, really. None of us has ever been bitten, and there 
are no rocks about here.” He took off his coat and 
rolled it up. “ Use this for a pillow,” he said; “ no, 
I don’t want it. I’m never too cold nor too hot. I’m 
acclimated, you know.” 

“ Keep it yourself,” said Trent ; “ I am not going 
to lie down.” He seated himself beside his friend as 
he spoke. Lispenard was anxious to talk over the in- 
creasing success of his book with this best friend, and 
to outline to him his second book of philosophy. The 
starlight revealed his fair hair, his bright eyes, dark 
in contrast to his face, of a different whiteness from 
[ 265 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

his shirt-sleeves. His voice ran on, touching lightly 
here and there on many subjects. He had much to 
tell Trent, much to hear. 

Above them the yellow stars were dim. Thousands 
of feet above mists were forming into clouds. 

“ Theodore,” Trent asked abruptly, “ how have you 
been able to hold to your religion in the face of 
such immensity as this.? Think of the races of men 
who have looked up to those stars, the ancient civilisa- 
tion that was once here, for instance, and now but the 
dust of the desert about us.” 

“ I have passed through all that,” he answered ; “ it 
has become home to me out here although the sense of 
immensity does not go. It is mystery within mystery, 
but the soul’s aspiration is its own answer of immor- 
tality. Do you suppose we can wonder over those 
stars now, and not know their vital meaning some time ? 
The hungry body argues bread. The future alone 
gives zest to the present, and I find that I am con- 
tinually looking forward to those further adventures 
of the spirit which immortality promises us.” 

“ What is it that makes you so happy, Theodore? ” 
Trent asked. “ It is always so with you. You are like 
a man intoxicated, whose stimulation never goes. But 
even so, I have never known you to be as you are now.” 

“No sudden conversion, I assure you,” he answered 
merrily. “ Was that what you thought? No, no, 
something less — vanity, vanity. Do you suppose I 
[ ^66 ] 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


have lost relish of life because I have lived so long out 
here? Do you think the taste of success is not sweet 
in my mouth? I have hungered for it, Trent,” his 
voice vibrant with sudden passion ; ‘‘ hungered for it. 
And it is coming. Behold in me the philosopher, the 
flattered dreamer turned teacher. I am going to teach 
the young men of our university what the Church 
should be.” 

“ I did not know you cared so much for your 
church,” said Trent with wonder. 

“ Shall I tell you why religion is an empty husk 
for you? ” said Lispenard, turning over on his elbow. 
“ I will be your soul’s physician, and touch the sore 
spot. You have only brooded on religion, you have 
never thought seriously about it. I think in these 
days that most of us are not born to faith any more 
than the schoolboy loves his Latin and Greek. We 
have lost the heritage of our fathers. But if the boy 
is soundly whipped into learning his classics, the 
ideals of those splendid old philosophers will influence 
him in maturity, although he has forgotten every 
word of the languages. I never pray myself, except 
perfunctorily, but Mrs. Lispenard brought the chil- 
dren up to do so. Prayers are the props of our re- 
ligion. We learn faith by their aid.” 

“ Dear old Lispenard,” said Trent, smiling, but full 
of strange emotion. Had she not said that she had 
never heard him utter a prejudiced word, nor one that 
[ 267 ], 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

was unideal? No wonder that she could not leave the 
place where he was, that she hid her real reason behind 
a subterfuge of caring for the future of Sahuaro. 
What woman ever sacrificed the, man she loved for the 
town in which she lived! No, she did not love him. 
The thought did not make him jealous nor angry now, 
but profoundly sad. 

He looked about them. The mists were gathering 
closer, the stars no longer sparkled, but were soft and 
very yellow in the blackness. 

“ How desperately lonely it is here,” he said ; “ I 
should go insane if I remained here long.” He lifted 
his hand and let the sand trickle through his fingers. 

“ Did we ever tell you what Tiggy once said? ” 
asked Lispenard. “ When he was quite a little fellow 
he told his mother that he guessed there was sand 
enough in the desert to make an hour-glass for God to 
tell all the time in the world by.” 

“ I’m not surprised at any speech he makes,” Trent 
answered ; “ he is you over again.” 

“ Did you ever hear of joy making people weak? ” 
Lispenard asked thoughtfully, after a while. “ I have 
had a faint heart ever since Adele came back and my 
book was accepted, and, finally, as I have seen my 
ideals taking form in those buildings, it has seemed 
almost too much. If you don’t understand what I 
mean I can’t explain it. To-morrow we must go up to 
Cozzens’s room and see the plans for the complete 
[ 268 ] 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 

quadrangle. He has them framed and hanging on his 
wall. I often think how we owe all of this to Miss 
Armes. It was her inspiration. I think I wrote to you 
about it.” 

“ Yes,” said Trent, his heart beating as furiously 
as if he were a boy. He longed to have his friend con- 
tinue the subject, but he relapsed into silence, and 
Trent, remembering the sonnet, wondered if the same 
beautiful face were forming for them both in the dark- 
ness. At this time last night he had held her in his 
arms, her cheek laid to his. He asked nothing more of 
Fate than that moment might be repeated. Restless- 
ness, born of his unsatisfied love, was upon him. He 
determined to leave Lispenard that he might at least 
walk by her house. He raised his head to the sky and 
gained a sense of overwhelming darkness. The stars 
were almost gone. And as if he were once more a very 
little child he was seized with terror of the dark. 

“ I never heard such a stillness. It is so awful I 
would not like to raise my voice. It is a kind of death 
in life. How can you endure it, Theodore.? On the 
ocean, although the night may be like pitch, you can 
at least hear the ripple of the waves, and in the forest 
it is never still — but here, God knows, here is nothing. 
I can scarcely realise there is air to-night. You 
might listen forever, and I do not believe you would 
hear even the whir of a bird’s wings above you out 
here.” 


[ 269 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ Hush,” said his companion. He tapped his walk- 
ing-stick on the ground lightly, once, twice, thrice. 

In a moment came the reply, the sharp little tap, 
tap, tap, of a prairie-dog in his burrow. 

“ How is that,” said Lispenard, laughing; “ can an 
army of homes be a desert.^ ” 

Tap, tap, tap, the little creature was giving its 
signal again. 

Knocking lightly with his stick in answer, he con- 
tinued. “ They follow irrigation. And far below us 
are the invisible rivers of the desert to which they bur- 
row down.” 

“ I am reminded of Coleridge’s lines,” spoke Trent, 
softened. 

“ ‘ Where Alpli, the sacred river, ran, 

Through caverns measureless to man 
Down to a sunless sea.’ ” 

He rose. “ Don’t come if you don’t want to, but I’m 
going in. I can’t stand any more of this to-night. 
It’s too lonely.” 

“Go on, then,” Lispenard retorted gaily ; “ I am 
not going with you.” 

“ Well, good-night,” said Trent, looking down af- 
fectionately at the boyish figure at his feet. He went 
away and left him lying there. 

He was glad of the cheerful greeting of the little 
town when he went back into it. People were still eat- 
ing and drinking in at Campi’s; music floated out 
[ 270 ] 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 

from behind the saloon doors, and a couple of cowboys 
were aiming at the leaping white rabbit and hounds 
in the open shooting gallery which he remembered so 
well. A crowd was beginning to gather in a small 
adobe building where a cock-fight was to come off 
later. Trent passed the ruffled game cocks, which were 
as yet tethered each by a cord to a peg driven in the 
earth near the sidewalk. The proprietor of the cigar 
stand was throwing dice with his customers, and he 
could see a couple of industrious Chinese, barefooted 
and in blue jeans, ironing in the back of the laundry 
shop. He felt a lift of spirits. This rough, floating 
population was intensely real and human, and he was 
more in sympathy with their interdependence than 
with the solitude of that boyish figure lying alone in 
the desert, w^atching the dimming stars. He was 
in Sahuaro once more, with its quaint Mexican- 
Spanish traditions infused with American ambi- 
tion ; its adobe houses and green plaza ; its low 
nestling trees and the brooding spirit of the mission 
of Santa Ines. He did not wonder that Yucca loved 
it, that she should refuse to leave. He felt him- 
self weakening; a man might do worse than end his 
days Rere. He turned from the main street into that 
on which she lived. The sound of music was in the 
quiet street, and as he strolled on he distinguished the 
guitar accompaniment to the voice. It was a Mexican 
serenading his sweetheart. 

[ rii ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

The wild love of the song stirred his pulses the 
while his instinct revolted against lending himself to 
the mood of abandonment the music invoked. 

As he neared Miss Armes’s home the singing ceased, 
and a young man leapt the adobe wall of her outer gar- 
den and came toward him, twanging his guitar, and 
humming broken snatches of the serenade. As they 
passed each other in the lamplight at the corner Trent 
recognised the romantic dark face, and nodded to the 
young fellow. He was a parishioner of Lispenard’s. 
He could scarcely be jealous of him, but he stood long 
outside her garden wall breathing the magnolia- 
scented air, thinking that the voice of a boy could 
reach her, while he had no way to let her know that he 
stood without, hungry for the sound of her voice and 
the touch of her hand. And he was scornful and im- 
patient of his own stiffness of moral fibre which could 
not lend itself to abandonment, which made principles 
out of conventions, and made it impossible for him to 
think the world well lost for love. 


[ 272 ] 


CHAPTER XX 


J IM and Tiggy were home again, so changed, and 
yet so unchanged in their mother’s fond eyes. Jim 
was now sixteen, tall and large for his age like the 
men of her family. In the fall, through his father’s 
coaching during the summer, he would be able to enter 
college. They intended him to take the classical 
course first, and then adopt a profession. Tiggy had 
changed less, but the cold New England winters had 
done the little fellow good, and his mother saw the 
healthy colour in his cheeks for the first time. 

Often through the half-closed door of the living 
room Lispenard as he sat at his desk found himself 
listening to the pretty by-play that went on in the 
other part of the house between the mother and sons. 
Adele was a coquette with the oldest boy, and made 
more of a baby of Tiggy than ever before. He heard 
her pretence of alarm for the splendid health of her 
boy when she detected the odour of tobacco in his 
hair, and his pleased, important protestation in reply 
that he was not to be treated like a child any more; 
his fine and confident promise that he’d keep an eye on 
Tiggy, and “ lamm ” him if he ever caught him at the 
same trick. 

“ Jim would make an admirable censor of public 
morals,” said Lispenard to himself ; “ he would take no 
[ 273 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

petty personal view.” He opened his watch and placed 
it in front of him. At eleven o’clock he was going to 
hear Jim’s Greek, and he had only a little over an hour 
for his own work. 

The boys had been home a week, and the novelty of 
their coming still lingered and made a holiday atmos- 
phere in the house. Under the bronze boar which was 
his paper weight was a note. Since his arrival Tiggy 
placed a letter there every morning, and Lispenard 
always answered it, putting his reply in place of 
the other. It invariably disappeared mysteriously, 
and he could only guess from Tiggy’s demure expres- 
sion that he had received it. It was tacitly understood 
between them that the correspondence was to be kept 
secret. 

“ Did you ever,” read this morning’s note, “ sit all 
by yourself on a big stone and pretend like you was 
asleep ” 

“ How can he write ‘ like you was ’ and be my 
child.? ” murmured Lispenard, and read on. 

“ only your eyes were open, and after a while 

you see two eyes watching you, and winking faster 
than mamma’s little gold watch ticks. And also two 
long ears trembling because they are listening so hard. 
His fur is grey like the bunch-grass, and he thinks you 
do not see him. Do you know who I mean ? 

“ Your kind friend, 

“ Tiggy.” 


[ 274 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 

He took his pen and wrote in answer : “ I think 3^ou 
mean a jack-rabbit. Did you ever think a deer had 
the same kind of big eyes so that it, too, could watch 
out for enemies ? Can you whistle as Cozzens can, and 
gather a number of rabbits about you.^^ Try it. 

“ Your faithful friend, 

“ T. L.” 

He looked out of the open door and saw Jim going 
through the gate, and knew he was going down to 
Haydon’s. He thoroughly approved of the associa- 
tion, for he felt that the depot was to Jim what the 
corner grocery was to a village boy, and that he was 
acquiring homely virtues from the station-master: 
shrewdness in judging people, practical suggestions 
about nursing sick people, and learning the history of 
the Civil War in the best way from a Southerner who 
fought in it, and hearing from him quaint tales of 
the negroes. It fretted him not at all, although it did 
his wife, that Haydon went about in his shirt sleeves, 
chewing tobacco. 

Jim was glad to be home, proud to tell his cronies 
of his experiences in the East, more confident than 
ever that Sahuaro for a town of its size was not to be 
equalled for attractiveness in the whole United States. 
The palms about the plaza were finer to him than the 
arching elms of New England streets; and as for 
dreariness, what could be more dreary than an East- 
[ 275 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

ern winter, leafless and cold, and generally grey. He 
had not learned to like swimming. So much water was 
foreign to his nature ; and who would care for the close 
woods who had ever watched the black wings of a con- 
dor sailing motionless in a boundless blue sky? 

Like a sailor on land he had been ill at ease in the 
New England city, missing the vast freedom of the 
open desert and the immeasurable sky. He closed 
the gate behind him, and wandered down the street, 
his hands in his pockets, squinting a little in the strong 
light, a trifle deflant and aggressive in his manner like 
any healthy lad of his age. 

Cozzens stood on the corner in front of the bank 
talking to a couple of men. He glanced at Jim 
sternly, and gave him a curt nod. 

“ Fine-looking boy, the minister’s son,” remarked 
one of his companions. 

“ Straight legs and good lungs,” said Cozzens 
brusquely. He had no intention of spoiling Jim. 

Jim glanced back over his shoulder at the powerful 
figure of his friend. He wished he dared hang around 
Cozzens’s office all day wrapped in boyish admiration 
of the big mine owner, but there was no invitation in 
the glance he received, and so he went on toward the 
plaza. 

There he found Haydon sweeping off the platform. 
At present his house contained no invalid, and he was 
a man of leisure. He handed his broom over to Jim, 
[ 276 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 

and sat down in one of his two big-armed chairs. In 
return for his hospitality and entertainment he always 
demanded that the boys who hung around the depot 
should help him out with his chores. 

He took a bite of tobacco and stared out to the 
desert, his weather-eye cocked. “ Looks roughish,” he 
remarked. 

“ Huh,” said Jim, giving a final sweep with the 
broom, and sitting down in the other chair. 

The sky had lost the deep blue of early morning, 
and was lilac with a reddish tinge. Far off the wind 
was raising swirls of sand, but the breeze had not yet 
reached Sahuaro, and the bordering palms of the 
plaza were motionless. 

“ Kind of quiet to-day,” said Jim, after a while, 
fretting that he could not go up and hang around 
Cozzens’s office. 

‘‘ Roughish,” insisted Haydon. “ It’s a storm- 
breeder.” 

The mountains were crouching low, dull and threat- 
ening in the reddish haze of the air. 

“ What’s Tiggy doing out there all this time.^ ” 
asked the station-master. 

“ Where enquired Jim scornfully, as if he 
doubted the observation the question implied. 

“ Must have found something,” commented Hay- 
don. 

“ Oh, now I see him ! ” cried Jim. 

[ 277 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

The little fellow had stopped near the Indian vil- 
lage, and as they watched him he started on. 

“ Guess I’ll go find out what he’s up to,” said Jim 
restlessly. He rose and strode off, his hands in his 
pockets. He and Tiggy had seen little of each other 
since their return. Away the bond of their mutual 
loneliness had united them; here their separate inter- 
ests and Jim’s old friends took them apart. 

Tiggy was well out into the open desert by the time 
his brother reached the Indian village. Jim stopped to 
greet an old squaw who was famous for her pottery, 
and whom he had always known. She was covering 
up her clay and several half-formed vases with a heavy 
blanket. Why was she not making her pottery, he 
asked her in the Spanish patois which Cozzens had 
taught him. She was chary of words, and for answer 
looked up at the sky, and out at the desert, and shook 
her head. She feared a storm, and would not work 
until it was over, for if the sand blew on the wet clay 
in the bin it would ruin it. 

A little further on he passed old Juan, her husband, 
who was digging wood for the three-cornered fireplace 
in their adobe hut. The great tap-roots lay about him 
on the shimmering sand like evil snarls twisted by a 
witch. 

He heard the Indian’s guttural voice calling after 
him, and caught the word red in the Spanish- Amer- 
ican patois he spoke. 


[ 278 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 

“ What does he want, I wonder,” thought Jim with 
a good-natured wave of his hand. “ Too much mes- 
cal, I guess.” 

He looked back again over his shoulder and saw 
that the old man beckoned to him again. Afterward 
Jim remembered the warning gesture of the bowed 
wooddigger of the desert, but now he hurried on, anx- 
ious to overtake Tiggy, who was some distance out. 

“ Where are you going. Tig.? ” he shouted, when he 
at last neared him. It was nearly noon, and the sun 
was blazing. He was beginning to feel irritated. 
“ Why, don’t you stop when I call to you .? ” he cried. 

“ I’m stopping,” said Tiggy serenely. But as he 
continued to walk on, Jim fell into step with him. 

‘‘ I’m going to build a sand-boat,” he said. “ I’m 
going to make the money by working for Cozzens at 
the mines during the vacation. Won’t we have some 
jolly sailing.? Talk about your old ocean. Tig. The 
fellows at school didn’t know anything about it here, 
did they.? Thought I was bluffing. I wish they’d 
all come out and take a sail with me.” 

He raised his voice and gave a great shout. “ Don’t 
you feel as if we’d only been whispering while we were 
away. It’s kind of good to stretch your lungs once 
more, isn’t it .? ” 

Tiggy followed his example and called out, but the 
second time he shouted it struck Jim that his tone was 
peculiar. 


[ 279 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ How queer you call/’ he said. “ Why don’t you 
give a good live yell the way I do.^ ” 

Tiggy laughed and fled over the sands. When he 
was at a safe distance he put his hand to his mouth 
and gave a low, long, peculiar cry. 

“ You are calling to someone,” said Jim, dumb- 
founded. He looked around and saw no one. He 
frowned, for he never approved of Tiggy’s pretend- 
ing someone else than themselves was around. “ Stop 
it ! ” he cried, with the ready tyranny of the older 
brother, and ran after him. But Tiggy eluded him 
like a jack-rabbit, doubling on his steps, lighter 
and swifter than his brother, giving that peculiar cry 
when he could pause for breath. Then Jim began to 
laugh as he saw that he was beaten, and he was proud 
of Tiggy’s ability to win out against him. 

“ The darn little cuss,” he said, quoting Cozzens. 
Jim could have cursed the men at the mines as well 
as the frontiersman himself. “ Here,” he called ; 
‘‘ you’ve lost your cap back there.” 

But he would not heed him, and Jim had to go back 
and pick up the cap himself. “ Come on ; I promise 
to let up on you.” 

So Tiggy waited, and put on his cap. “ I’ll tell you 
what I’m calling. See, over there.” 

Jim stared. “ Get out,” he said slowly ; “ you’re 
crazy.” 

Far off, it seemed to him, he saw a grey form, yet as 

[ 280 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 

he looked longer it seemed nearer, for the desert was 
full of illusions this morning. It appeared like a 
gigantic dog as it stood for a minute on a little sand- 
hill, eyeing them. 

“ It’s my wolf ! ” cried Tiggy, dancing with delight. 
“ He ha^ come back.” 

“ He’s only got three feet,” cried Jim. 

“ Yes, yes ! ” shouted Tiggy ; “ he has only three 
paws.” 

Jim bounded ahead. “ Come on ; let’s get nearer 
him.” Curiosity as to Tiggy’s familiarity with 
a wolf was for the time lost in his desire to get 
nearer it. 

“ Oh, let me go first, and call,” cried his little 
brother ; “ you’ll scare him.” 

“ Oh, you shut up ! ” cried Jim, excited, panting. 
He saw that the wolf was not afraid of them, for it 
kept at an irregular dog-trot only a short way ahead, 
once, indeed, so near that Jim saw him distinctly, 
grey, lean, and shaggy, his red tongue lolling out of 
his mouth. And it seemed to Jim that the old wolf 
was actually laughing at them. 

“ Shut your mouth, you darn fool ! ” he cried, in 
high good spirits. 

They came into a deep arroyo, and the walking 
was hard. Running was impossible. The fine sand 
blew into their faces. It filled their ears and hair. 

“ We’ve run into a sand-devil, I guess,” said Jim. 

[281 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ Take my hand; keep your eyes closed. We’ll just 
stand still until it dies down.” 

Tiggy slipped his hand into his brother’s, and his 
instant obedience showed that he realised their danger. 
It seemed to the older lad that the heat was increas- 
ing. He started to speak, and the sand blew into his 
mouth. His feet were sinking deeper and deeper be- 
cause of the drifts blowing up behind him. “ Unless 
we get out of here pretty quick,” he thought ; “ we’ll 
be swallowed up.” 

He dropped Tiggy’s nervous little hand, and made 
a telescope of his own hands while he surveyed the 
landscape. The sun was reddish. That was what 
Juan, the old wooddigger, had been trying to tell 
him. Far off in the sky back of the town he saw a 
murky, dun-coloured cloud moving rapidly, and in- 
creasing in size as it rose above the houses. A 
sensation of indescribable terror filled the boy’s 
heart. He had never seen anything in nature 
so angry before. The thunder storms in the East 
had been full of grandeur, but this cloud was only 
angry, a seething, boiling mass, darkening the sky. It 
spread like a pall above Sahuaro, shadowing the low, 
green trees, the tiled roofs. The little town — his town 
— was doomed! His parents and Cozzens and Yucca, 
Haydon, all, would be killed! He had a moment of 
wild panic. Was there no way to warn them.'^ Yet, 
as he watched, on the extreme further side of the town, 
[ 282 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


the red tiled roofs and trees suddenly shone gay in a 
strip of sunlight. The simoon was passing over Sa- 
huaro. He saw the whole town once more bathed in 
the sunlight, but a little dim as if in a light fog. His 
heart seemed bursting with joy and relief. And then 
awful terror seized him anew. The cloud was making 
straight for him and Tiggy ! It was flying too high, 
he saw now, to burst above the Indian village. Some- 
thing pushed against his knees, whining and trem- 
bling like a huge dog. It was the wolf which had en- 
ticed them on, and he kicked it with sudden fury. 

“ Come on, we’ve got to make for the mountains at 
once, or we’ll be choked. Keep your eyes shut. Here, 
wait a minute.” He drew out his handkerchief and 
tied it over Tiggy’s face. 

“ I can’t breathe,” the little fellow protested. 

“ You’ve got to,” said Jim grimly ; “ breathe 
through it.” He jerked his brother’s jacket off of 
him, and tied it by the sleeves over his head. “ Push 
up the handkerchief a little underneath. Now you can 
get air all right. Stand still until I get ready.” 

He remembered that Cozzens had told in such a 
storm as this men wrapped their tent-blankets over 
their heads, and made for shelter. They started on, 
Jim’s thought for himself lessened by his sense of re- 
sponsibility toward Tiggy; and Tiggy’s fear quieted 
by his brother’s firm grasp. Straight ahead into that 
blinding, stinging atmosphere they plunged, sinking 
[ 28 S] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 




ankle-deep into the sand. And Jim knew that in a 
moment more that angry, boiling cloud would burst 
above them. 

From his doorway Lispenard had been watching the 
panorama on the desert until the sand began to whirl 
through the streets of the town, and he was obliged to 
go within. His wife came in from her marketing, 
laughing, her brown hair full of sand. She loved the 
sense of blowing and excitement. 

“ Come and sit down here with me,” he called to 
her; “ the wind has reached the new buildings, and see 
how the sand is beating against them.” 

“ How dark it is, suddenly,” she cried. “ I wonder 
where the boys are.^^ ” 

“ They are either with Cozzens or Hay don watch- 
ing the storm,” he answered. 

They saw a curious brown cloud forming in the sky 
near the horizon. 

“ I never saw anything so wonderful,” he cried, his 
eyes bright as an eagle’s in his fearlessness of the ele- 
ments. “ Can you realise that this terrible storm com- 
ing is made only of sand and wind blowing in a clear 
sky ? ” 

Adele shook. “ Come away. Don’t watch it, Theo- 
dore. Come away. I wish the children were in.” 

“ Think of riding in the wind like that cloud ! ” he 
cried. ‘‘ It is dust, not rain, as if the genie of the 
earth had wrapped itself in its brown mantle, and risen 
[ 284 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 

in anger. There’s another idea for a poem I shall jot 
down in my note-book for Tiggy to write some time,” 
he added, smiling. 

“ No,” she said, dragging at his sleeve. “ Come 
away, dear.” Her first enjoyment of the wild excite- 
ment had gone. 

But the cloud passed over Sahuaro and burst some- 
where out on the desert beyond the Indian village, 
toward the mountains. The darkness which had been 
suspended over the town was gone, and the sun shone 
red through a whirling atmosphere. Adele, too, 
brightened, and resumed her sewing, sitting at her 
husband’s side. 

They were surprised when they glanced up at the 
clock and saw that it was nearly two. 

“ The boys have stayed out somewhere with Coz- 
zens,” he said. 

“ Well, I’ll get us a little lunch, then,” she an- 
swered. 

“ You sit still,” he insisted ; “ I will get lunch for us 
myself.” 

“ It has grown cold,” said his wife. She caught 
his hand and pressed it to her, smiling. “ You are not 
cold, Theodore, dear, are you? Perhaps we had bet- 
ter have k fire in here.” There were times when Ihe 
sweet motherliness of her nature seemed to overflow to 
him, and the tenderness between them had been deeper 
since her return home. 


[^85 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


I feel that separation more now that I am with 
you than I did even when away. I cannot bear to 
think that I ever left you. It always makes me sad to 
think that I was away from you when you were ill that 
time.” 

He could only kiss her, dumb in his self-reproach to 
think he had caused her to wound herself. 

He stirred up the embers of the morning’s fire, and 
heaped on the mesquite wood. Then he cleared a 
space on his writing-table, and brought in the salad, 
and mixed it there, after a receipt of Cozzens’s. 

“ He used to make it for me when I was ill,” he 
told her; “ there ought to be thirteen different things 
in it, but I have only six, the lettuce, the peppers, the 
banana, and the onion, and cucumber, and a tomato.” 

“ Oh, that’s plenty ! ” cried Adele. She had little 
respect for Cozzens’s cooking. 

They heated the water over the fire for the tea. 

“ Have you felt older since the boys came back.?^ ” 
he asked. 

“ Yes,” she confessed deliciously; “ have you.? ” 

‘‘ Mercy, yes ! ” he said. 

“ Isn’t it terrible.? ” she said. 

He cut the loaf of French bread on a board she had 
brought home to him as a gift. The white loaf on the 
dark wood with its garland of wheat, and the words. 
Be Thankful, was pleasing to him. It was fine and 
simple, like the dignified injunction of an old religion. 

[ 286 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


From the cupboard above the fireplace he took down 
an old blue jar filled with ginger. 

“ I was saving that as a treat for the boys Sunday 
evening with their tea,” she protested. ‘‘ Yah Sin ” 
— their Chinese laundryman — “ gave it to me for 
Tiggy.” But nevertheless she was delighted that he 
should remember her liking for the dainty. 

It was the first time since the boys’ return that they 
had been alone, and they enjoyed the lunch together 
as if it had been a lovers’ tryst. 

“ See how red the sun is ! It makes me think of 
Indian summer days at home when the sun was in a 
haze all day long,” he said, a happy look in his blue 
eyes. “ How beautiful it is ! ” 

“ Yes,” she assented, but the look of the desert be- 
gan to appal her, and she sat with her back to the 
window. 

The wind howled and shook the casements ; the sand 
began to drift down the chimney, and made a fine pat- 
ter on the fire. 

“ Isn’t this splendid ! ” he cried ; “ isn’t it fun ! ” 
They had finished luncheon, and he searched among 
his books until he found a thin old-fashioned volume 
bound in maroon watered silk. “ I’m going to read 
you Whittier’s ‘ Snow-Bound.’ ” 

She took up a bedroom slipper she was making for 
Tiggy. “ If I’m to hear ‘ Snow-Bound ’ before a fire 
I shall be the house-mother and do my knitting.” 

[m] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

Halfway through it she interrupted him. “ Don’t 
you think it is horrid for a woman to be secretive? ” 

Lispenard marked the page in the book, and closed 
the volume. “ Adele, there isn’t a book in my library 
which I haven’t at one time or another tried to read 
aloud to you, and which hasn’t a slip of paper to mark 
the place where you interrupted me. Who is it you 
think horrid ? I know a woman never deals in abstrac- 
tions.” 

“ It’s Yucca,” she confessed, her dimples showing; 

she never mentioned that first night Jarvey Trent 
called on her to me. I wish now I hadn’t told her I 
was once engaged to him.” 

“ I don’t think they’ll ever marry,” Lispenard an- 
swered. “ She would never leave Sahuaro, and Trent 
can’t change his way of doing. He was always set in 
his way.” 

“ Theodore,” she said, “ I don’t care how beautiful 
all the men in the world think her, only I wish I were 
prettiest to you.” She laid her hand on his knee, and 
lifted her face to kiss him. “ Can you imagine we 
have been married seventeen years,” she continued; 
“ and that we have two children ? It seems as if we 
were only just engaged. I feel as if there were only 
you and me, and Tiggy and Jim were apart from us.” 

He held her hand closely in his as he stared out of 
the window at the fiery ball of the sun just above the 
university buildings. 


[ 288 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


He appreciated her sensitiveness over Trent’s de- 
votion to a woman of whom she had always been jeal- 
ous. Nothing appealed more to his tenderness than 
Adele’s jealousy. He did not misunderstand it, but 
knew it was only a form of self-depreciation. As far 
as he was concerned he would have told her of that 
afternoon when he kissed Miss Armes’s hand, but he 
knew it would only wound her. Then, too, he felt that 
any needless confession was spiritually undignified. 
All explanations between them were petty when the 
great fact of their love had become so real to them both. 

“ Look at the sun, my dearest,” he said ; “ did you 
ever see anything so awful and majestic? I have a 
sensation of almost Biblical simplicity, as if the Lord 
were angry with us.” He laughed at the absurdity of 
the thought. 

They thought the wind blew the door open, but it 
was Cozzens who came in, red-faced and spluttering, 
and shaking the sand from him. 

“ I can’t tell whether you remind me most of 
Boreas, or a Newfoundland after a bath,” said his 
host. “ Where did you leave the boys? ” 

“ I haven’t seen them all day, I mean not since early 
morning,” he answered. “ Aren’t they here ? ” 

“ I think I will walk out and get them,” Lispenard 
said, suddenly white ; “ would you like to go along 
with me? Any errands you want me to do downtown 
for you, my dear,” he added to his wife. 

[ 289 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ Theodore,” she cried, “ you are afraid.” 

“ No, no,” he answered. 

She clutched Cozzens for support. “ Oh, my God ! ” 
she whispered. 

“ Adele,” said her husband sternly, “ I am not 
frightened. I am going out to hunt up the boys, and 
we will all be back in a little while.” 

Cozzens forced her gently to a seat. “ Now, lookye 
here, don’t be too quick about getting hysterical. Just 
have a nippy,” reaching for the flask in his hip- 
pocket, “ and keep calm.” 

The two men hurried away. “ Look for Mr. Trent. 
Perhaps they are with him,” she cried, running to the 
door after them. On the lounge was the half -finished 
shoe she was knitting for Tiggy. She took it up and 
kissed it. 

“ Mother’s darling,” she said, weeping. 


[S90] 


CHAPTER XXI 


M idnight came and went, and the fury of 
the storm prevented any search being made. 
The Overland train did not arrive, for men 
could not face the storm to clear the tracks. But Coz- 
zens took courage from the fact that the wind was 
steadily decreasing since the afternoon. The neigh- 
bours, kind and concerned, fought their way over and 
promised to begin the search as soon as the storm died 
down, and returned to their own homes. 

In Lispenard’s house, he and his wife, and Miss 
Armes and Cozzens, sat about the study table. The 
three, inspired by his example, made a determined 
effort at self-control. 

“ Many a boy has had to rough it, my darling,” he 
told his wife; “it won’t hurt them to stay out all 
night. They have probably sought shelter in the 
mountains.” 

“ I was lost once for three days with my father, but 
we escaped,” said Miss Armes. She was looking over 
her friend’s work-basket. “ What is this red and yel- 
low calico for ? ” 

“ It’s some little dresses for the Indian children. 
Didn’t the society give you any to make.^^ ” Mrs. Lis- 
penard answered. 


[291 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ Perhaps that’s what they sent me. I haven’t 
opened the bundle. The women’s sewing guild is the 
only tyrannical feature of your church, Mr. Lispen- 
ard,” she rejoined, threading a needle. ‘‘ I’ll help 
make these. Is there an extra thimble here.?* ” 

“ In a box on my bureau,” said Mrs. Lispenard, 
“ my gold thimble. I’ll get it for you.” 

The two sat and sewed, watched by Cozzens, who 
smoked steadily, and Lispenard, who half smiled, but 
with set jaw. 

Adele looked younger and more vivid than Yucca. 
Her eyes shone ; the bright colour flamed in her cheeks 
and lips, and her brown hair curled all about her face 
in lovely disorder. She and Jim were so alike that Lis- 
penard could not glance at her without a contraction 
of the heart. Suddenly she frightened them all by 
rising and flinging herself into his arms. 

‘‘ I can’t help crying, Theodore,” she sobbed ; “ but 
Yucca has made both the sleeves for the same arm.” 

Lispenard looked over his wife’s head as it lay on his 
breast. 

“ She will rip it out and do it over again,” he said. 

“ I have it nearly ripped out now,” their guest 
hastened to say. 

Adele raised her head, and felt in her husband’s 
coat for his handkerchief to wipe her eyes. She 
smiled at the three who were watching her anxiously. 
“ Never mind. I’ll rip it out. Yucca. I suppose I am 
[ 292 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

absurd about the boys, and I know you said only the 
other day, Theodore dear, that I must expect them to 
have adventures, and get into trouble more or less like 
all boys.” 

“ That’s the stuff,” said Cozzens huskily ; “ it ’ll 
make men of them. Lord above, if you could know 
what I’ve been through ! And I’ve learned Jim how 
to look out for himself. There aint a thing about the 
desert from a redskin to a rattlesnake that I haven’t 
given him points on.” 

“ I know it,” she agreed, comforted ; “ and I always 
feel that Jim will look out for Tiggy.” 

It was half-past one o’clock, and the lamp was go- 
ing out. 

“ The one in the kitchen is filled,” said Mrs. Lis- 
penard, and her husband went out and brought it in. 

‘‘ I told Trent he had no business to start out by 
himself. When the ponies turn tail to the wind and 
won’t budge, a man isn’t going to accomplish any- 
thing,” growled Cozzens ; “ and he’s wearing himself 
out for nothing, and will be a lady on our hands to- 
morrow when we most need him, damned fool ! ” The 
big fellow was unable to sit still in his nervous desire 
for sleep. He twitched and turned like a restless 
animal, caged, his eyes half-closed. He had smoked so 
many cigars that his tongue was burned. 

“ Hadn’t you better lie down, and try to get a little 
nap.?” Yucca suggested gently. 

[ 293 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ Too nervous to sleep,” he growled, turning his 
irritable eyes upon her. Anxiety always expressed 
itself in irritation in Cozzens. Nevertheless he got up 
and rolled himself down on the lounge. 

Mrs. Lispenard, with her exquisite housewifely 
neatness, went into the boys’ bedroom and came out 
with a pillow in a clean, cool linen slip, and put it 
under his head. “ It is more comfortable than the em- 
broidered one,” she said. It was Tiggy’s little pillow, 
and she knew that the child would like to have his dear 
Cozzens lie on it. 

It was after two when Trent finally came in, and 
staggered rather than walked to the chair Lispenard 
pushed toward him. 

“ I heard from the husband of that old squaw who 
makes the pottery that they had seen the boys shortly 
before noon starting for the mountains,” he said. 

“ Then they are safe ! ” cried Lispenard. 

“ It has taken me all this time to get to the Indian 
village and back. The wind was with me coming 
home, but I wonder now how I ever reached there.” 

“ I wonder, too,” said his host. He had been on the 
point of starting with his friend, but Cozzens had re- 
strained him from the folly. If the boys were in the 
Indian village they would have managed to get home, 
he argued sensibly, but Trent was disposed to follow 
his own judgment, and would not be dictated to. He 
had gone eager to relieve his friends’ anxiety as soon 
[ 294 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

as possible should the children by any chance have de- 
cided to remain there over night. 

Now, after the stress and strain, he almost collapsed 
in his chair. He felt that he had been riding through 
an inferno. The room was dark to him, and in the 
dimness he saw Yucca’s face, pale and far away, as if 
he saw her in a dream. He knew that unless he con- 
trolled himself he would call to her by name. Her 
eyes drew him. He wanted to get nearer, and let his 
head fall on her breast, and so go to sleep. To save 
himself from absurdity he staggered to his feet, his 
eyes dazed. 

“ Open the door,” he said ; “ it’s close in here.” He 
got out on the porch, and leant against the railing. 
The wind had changed, and where he stood it was 
comparatively quiet. Yet without this haven there was 
a roaring in the air and it was hot with an electrical 
quality which imparted a sensation of creaking to his 
eyelids. 

The other three followed him out, leaving Cozzens 
asleep on the lounge. 

“ The wind no longer howls as it did,” spoke Mrs. 
Lispenard; and it is getting warm. We none of us 
seemed to realise it, did wg? And only this noon we 
sat by the fire, Theodore.” 

“ Yes, my darling,” he answered. 

“ Isn’t it strange to think we can’t even see Santa 
Ines, it is so dark. But I can hear the old bronze bells 
[ 295 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

ring now and then above the wind, can’t you? How 
did you get home, Jarvey? ” she continued. 

“ I floundered along somehow, and then there were 
the lights in the depot. Haydon is a good soul. He 
had a lamp in every window,” he answered. 

“ Someone told me Haydon cried when he heard 
about the boys,” she said in an awed tone, as if the 
greater grief were the station-master’s, and not hers. 

Miss Armes looked at her anxiously. She did not 
act naturally, and she would rather that Adele would 
cry again. 

“ Doesn’t it seem very warm to you? ” asked Mrs. 
Lispenard. Mercifully she did not think that such 
heat meant thirst, thirst in the desert for those who 
were lost. 

Trent’s head cleared, and he was conscious that 
the woman he loved stood near him. He thought of 
his poor friends’ sons, and sighed heavily. Now if 
ever he longed for the comfort of Yucca’s love. Let 
her give it to him now, and he would pay the price. 
He would stay in this devil’s country if she would but 
once kiss him. He did not care much what happened 
except that he wanted her. He would drink sweetness 
from her lips, and forget the terrible thought that 
burned into his brain : the thought of two boys dying 
of thirst in the desert. The door swung to behind 
them, and it was dark out there on the porch. But 
somewhere in that darkness she was, cool in her white 
[ 296 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

gown, lovely. In a moment she would be in his arms 
again, with her cheek to his. He put out his hand. 
“ Yucca,” he said hoarsely. 

It did not strike either Lispenard or his wife as 
strange that he should call her by name. 

“ I don’t believe she’s here,” said Mrs. Lispenard ; 
“ she’s gone in, I guess.” As she spoke she opened the 
door, and the light streamed out, f\,nd showed that they 
three were alone. 

Trent and Lispenard followed her back into the 
house. Miss Armes was not there, but Adele resumed 
her sewing as if she had already forgotten her friend’s 
absence. Cozzens still slept peacefully as a child. 
The heat was making his sandy hair curl about his 
forehead. 

The other two men maintained silence. They had 
reached the point when endurance was all that was left 
to them. 

A little later Miss Armes returned, sand in her 
golden hair, in the ruffles of her gown, drenched with 
it as though it had been rain. 

“ Where have you been ? ” asked Lispenard, trying 
to smile at her. 

Trent eyed her grimly. 

“ I thought that you must have some sleep before 
morning,” she told Lispenard ; “ and I went home for 
something the doctor gave me when my father was 
killed so I would go to sleep nights. But what you 
[ 297 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

said comforted me, and did me more good than this, I 
know.” 

“ I remember,” answered Lispenard, and his eyes 
lighted for the first time that night ; “ I said he went 
home a spirit armed and victorious. The thought is 
always visual to my imagination, like a painting.” 

“ It is only three hours before dawn,” said Mrs. 
Lispenard, looking at the clock. “ Yucca is right. 
You must get some sleep.” 

Miss Armes went out into the dining room, and 
brought back a glass of water and a spoon. “ It can’t 
hurt you,” she said, pouring some drops from the 
bottle. 

“ Yes, dearest, you must lie down,” coaxed his wife; 
and Lispenard yielded, and took the glass of water 
and then went into his bedroom. “ I wish you would 
come and sit down beside me, Adele,” he said with sud- 
den wistfulness. She went in with him, and put her arm 
across him, as she sat at the head of the bed. She was 
very tired, and she rested her head against his pillow ; 
the tears rolled down her face, but she dared not stir 
to wipe them away for fear of disturbing him. 

Yucca stepped to their door and listened. “ I gave 
her some, too, in that glass of water,” she said, going 
back and sitting down opposite Trent. 

She shaded the lamp with a piece of paper that its 
light might not waken Cozzens. 

Trent had gone into the boys’ room and washed his 

[ »98 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


hands and face, and brushed some of the sand from his 
clothes and hair. He still looked tired, but his eyes 
were bright and his mouth firm. 

His companion picked up her sewing again, then let 
it drop. 

“ I feel as if all were dead except you and me, and 
as if it were vanity to sew on clothes for the living.” 

“ You did not wish me to sleep,” he said; “ you 
did not offer anything to me; you wished me to stay 
awake with you. Were you lonely.? ” 

“ Yes,” she answered. Above the mantel hung the 
picture of the two little princes in the tower. “ Mrs. 
Lispenard always thought they looked like the 
boys.” 

He nodded. 

“ When I was coming back,” she said ; “ the sky was 
clearing, and the moonlight was sifting through the 
sand in the air so that I saw the cupola of Santa 
Ines.” 

He smiled. He saw her kind intention to keep him 
diverted from thought of the lost children. 

An hour passed. She sewed a little, and glanced 
over a page of Lispenard’s manuscript which lay on 
the desk. 

“ He writes a beautiful hand,” she remarked. 

The old jealousy smouldered in her lover’s eyes. He 
wished no more of her sweet reserve. 

“ Kiss me, Yucca,” he said gloomily. 

[ 299 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


She drew her hand away. “ Oh, hush, hush ! ” she 
cried ; “ how can you when a matter of life or death 
hangs over this house ? ” 

“ It is a matter of life or death to me,” he answered, 
his gloomy eyes fixed on her. 

“ Oh, hush ! ” she said again. 

“ You will not kiss me? ” he said, and waited for her 
reply. Suddenly he made a gesture as if she stifled 
him, and he wanted to push her away. “ No, I do not 
want you to kiss me. Why should I desire you to if 
you do not love me enough to be my wife? I would 
like our love to be a thing of every day, comforting to 
us both, a refuge in each other if we have trouble, but 
you ” He looked away from her. 

From above the mantel the two little princes in their 
stricken embrace looked down upon them. 

“ You are a strange woman,” he said ; “ I once 
loved Mrs. Lispenard, that I know. She was not for 
me, and my way was clear. But as for you who will 
not marry me nor yet will let me go, what sort of love 
is that? ” 

The veering wind blew the sand in the door again, 
and he rose to close it, stepping softly so as not to 
waken Cozzens. 

She had been right. The moon was up, ghostly as 
in a fog, but he could see the cupola of the Santa Ines 
mission. He shut the door and returned to her. 

“ You do not care. Lispenard was right when he 

[ 300 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

wrote that sonnet. You are like the desert. Love 
comes and goes in your heart as this wind blows, 
now here, now there, and no man can tell where, and 
he is lost. Like him, I have found you out. You are 
a sorceress as the desert is a sorceress. Its beauty is an 
illusion, a chimera. And so I swear are you. He saw 
you through the veil of poetry. I know my friend. 
God forgive me that I once condemned him for it. 
And I let my secret longing for some aflPection in this 
world invest you with those qualities which make a 
woman sweet and tender, clinging to the man she 
loves ” He paused, choking with emotion. 

She regarded him as if she could scarcely believe she 
heard aright. She remembered her serene life until he 
had come to trouble it, the restlessness he had brought 
into it, and his determination to marry her and take 
her from her home. Oh, had she been false to that 
better love which was her friendship for Lispenard.^ 
It was Trent who had put evil into her mind. Never 
had her thoughts been disloyal to Adele. How had he 
dared to say such a thing to her.? She raised her eyes 
to his, and he encountered in her again that implacable 
pride in which she resembled her father. His eyes 
were level with her own. She meant to show him 
her anger, but instead she found herself impressed by 
the sincerity of his own gaze. Here was a man who 
would not deviate from what he believed right. Her 
face flushed; her own eyes fell from his. She re- 
[301 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

membered Lispenard’s kiss upon her hand. Was that 
no disloyalty to Adele.'^ 

He saw her pride vanish in timidity, the colour flame 
bright in her face, and he was won to tenderness. He 
rose and drew nearer her. In another moment he might 
have taken her in his arms, but she raised her hand in 
protest. “ No, no; not here.” 

It was the instinctive self-sacrifice of the natural 
woman to forego personal happiness while anyone 
she loved was in trouble. But he did not understand 
this, and would have put her hand aside. 

“ No,” she cried again, desperate to escape him; “ I 
do not love you.” 

They had been but half conscious of the fact that 
Cozzens was breathing quickly ; then he began to gasp 
quickly and painfully. They turned, startled, and 
saw him tearing ineffectually in his sleep at his collar. 

“ He is dreaming of thirst,” she cried, and ran to 
him, and shook him awake, trying to drag him to a 
sitting posture with all her slender strength. “ Coz- 
zens, dear, wake up,” she cried ; “ you are here with 
us ; ” for he was beginning to fight her away. “ You 
are only dreaming.” 

Then he realised where he was, and sat up, his eyes 
starting, his great chest heaving. 

“ It is the heat,” she said ; “ it has grown very 
warm.” 

He took the glass of water Trent handed him, 

[ 302 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


and gulped it down, and then drew out his handker- 
chief and wiped the perspiration from his face and 
throat. 

“ Well,” he said, “ I guess it’s time for us to start.” 

“ It isn’t morning yet,” answered Trent, “ but the 
moon is up.” 

Cozzens rose and blew out the flame of the lamp. 
After the first instant of darkness they saw the win- 
dows were grey. He was right ; it was time. “ Where’s 
Lispenard.? ” he asked. 

They told him asleep, and he nodded and followed 
Yucca out into the kitchen. The agony of the long 
night was over, and his weariness left Trent strangely 
quiescent. While the other two prepared breakfast, 
he sat in a chair at the open door of the kitchen. There 
was no coolness in the air, although it was so early in 
the morning. He saw his darling, pale from her long 
vigil, with Mrs. Lispenard’s apron tied about her slen- 
der waist, helping Cozzens. 

While they were at breakfast Lispenard joined 
them. “ My wife is still asleep.” His rest had re- 
freshed him, and hope had risen with the dying down 
of the storm. 

Trent saw that he alone of them was almost serene. 
“ He has faith, he believes in prayer,” he thought, 
‘‘ while I think it will be only a matter of chance if his 
boys are found alive.” 

Cozzens had made all preparations for the start the 

[303 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


night before. Waiting for him at the plaza were sev- 
eral picked men. Two were Indians, and the others 
were cowboys. 

He gave them his orders like a general sending out 
scouts. He knew the trails as an Indian did. When 
he finished his directions they started off as if at 
the signal of a rifle. He told Hay don to telegraph to 
the station below, and have them warn the engineer on 
the Overland to keep a watchout for the two boys. 
Then he drew Trent aside. “We will find them,” he 
said. “ You’ve got to look out for him,” with a nod 
toward Lispenard. He buttonholed him, pushing him 
back, that there should be no danger of being over- 
heard. “ You’ve got water. Don’t give more than a 
mouthful at a time. Jim will fight for it like a devil. 
But you won’t find them where I’m going to send you. 
If they got no further than the first mountains, we’d 
see them coming home now. I think they’ve been wan- 
dering all night.” 

Lispenard betrayed no impatience at this slight de- 
lay. He yielded absolutely to Cozzens’s judgment. 
“ The map of the desert will have to be changed after 
this storm,” he said, turning from his survey of the 
dreary waste as his two friends rejoined him. 

“ There was one such storm thirty years back,” said 
Cozzens, “ and the old Vulture trail was lost in one 
night and never found again.” He swung himself 
into his saddle. 


[ 304 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

He and Trent had to wait a moment for Lispenard, 
who mounted stiffly. 

“ He’s strung too high,” muttered Cozzens. “ Well, 
so long,” he shouted, and was off like a shot. 

The other two followed, more slowly. They passed 
the Indian village, which showed little sign of life. 
Sand was heaped like snow against the mud huts, and 
over the long green rows which showed the irrigated 
land. The row of ash trees planted as a wind-break 
was almost demolished. 

“ The Indians are superstitious about these si- 
moons,” Lispenard remarked. “ When the sun is red 
they think it poisonous to breathe the open air, and 
keep indoors for several days.” 

Trent wondered how Cozzens prevailed upon the 
two Indians he sent out to go in the face of such a 
superstition. Then he recalled the look of remorseless 
power the frontiersman had when angry. “ If 
they had refused, he would have shot them,” he 
thought. 

The heat enveloped them as though they were in an 
oven. He looked at Lispenard and saw his eyes were 
inflamed with alkali dust. His own eyes hurt; his 
nostrils smarted so that every breath he drew was pain, 
and his ears rang. Yet neither of them had been out 
in the storm, except when he struggled to the Indian 
village and back. He now gave up hope, believing 
that the boys could not have survived. 

[ 305 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


Before them stretched the open desert, trackless 
now as the sea. Sunken bowls appeared where it had 
been smooth, old boulders were exposed, and the grease- 
wood looked like miniature, stunted trees half buried 
in sand. The mountains rose with a tremendous sense 
of power, unbeautiful, grim, their base planted in the 
desert, awful in their endurance against the raging 
storms. Their tops were reddened by the rising 
sun. 

“ Look,” said Lispenard, pointing with the handle 
of his whip. 

Trent saw a heap of uncovered bones. 

“ Perhaps the good father at the Indian mission 
thought they were the skeletons of heretics when he 
buried them, and so would not pronounce the blessing 
of the Church,” Lispenard said, “ and they have re- 
fused to lie still in an unblessed grave.” 

Trent shivered. Never had he known such an un- 
holy dawn. 

Mrs. Lispenard did not waken for some time after 
the men had gone. “ I have been dreaming of a wolf,” 
she told her friend ; “ was it not strange ? I kept 
dreaming of my children and a wolf. Do you remem- 
ber that night when Jarvey Trent was here two years 
ago, and Theodore laughed and said I had discovered 
a were-wolf ? ” 

Yucca’s face blanched. 

Adele went to the open door. She saw the sand 

[ 306 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


drifted like snow in the street to the depth of several 
feet, and that her neighbour’s windows across the way 
had been broken by the wind. Fruit had been blown 
from the trees, and some of the latter even were up- 
rooted. A scorching breeze blew in her face. “ How 
hot it is after the storm ! I wish Theodore were in.” 
Her speech showed that she had given up all hope for 
her children. Later in the day she asked her friend if 
she remembered the old nursery tale of the babes in the 
woods, who had wandered away and died, and each 
little bird of the forest had brought a leaf in its beak 
to cover them with. “ But there are no leaves here in 
the desert,” she said ; “ no leaves ! ” She let the sewing 
she was trying to do fall into her lap. The thought of 
the forest pleased her. “You have never really been 
in the woods. Yucca. Do you know how beautiful 
they are, so safe, and very green ” 

“ ‘ To walk with the woman I love in the autumn 
woods ! ’ ” Yucca started. It was as though Trent 
were in the room saying those words again ! She half 
raised her arms and let them fall, with that sense of 
emptiness she had learned to know. Suppose he, too, 
never returned ! 

At sunset the two boys had not been found. Coz- 
zens waited only to hear this, and started out his men 
again on fresh horses, and went himself. 

Lispenard came in a little later. He sat his weary 
horse a moment, as he looked out toward the west, 
[ 307 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


where the beautiful buildings of the university were 
rising against the flaming sky. 

Trent put his hand on his shoulder as he dismounted. 

Go to your wife. We will take care of the rest.” 

A night of heavenly peace and coolness succeeded 
the day ; the dust settled ; the stars shone soft and yel- 
low, and at eleven o’clock the heavens glowed with the 
rising moon, red as though it were the harvest 
times. 

Long past midnight Trent, who had continued the 
search, calling until his voice had almost gone, listen- 
ing until his ears were hearing sounds which existed 
in his imagination only, returned to Sahuaro. 

Lispenard started when he came in, but collapsed 
again in his chair, as he read fresh denial of his hope 
in his friend’s face. Someone brought Trent a cup of 
coffee. He drank it and took a second cup. Then he 
rose to start out again. Lispenard followed him to the 
door, and wrung his hand at parting. 

Trent reached the street before he realised that 
Yucca had not been in the room. He had not seen her 
since morning. He gazed with vague foreboding down 
the street toward her home; then he left his horse 
standing, and went to see where she was. 

There was no reply to his knock upon her door. 
The handle turned to his touch, and he went in and 
called her name. The silence was fearful. He feared 
something had happened to her, and in a kind of panic 
[ 308 ] 


chapter twenty-one 

he searched the house. He went to a room at the end 
of the hall upstairs, and opened the door. The old 
Senora Teresa was there, telling over her beads. She 
was so deaf she did not hear him. He shut the door 
and went away, strangely calmed. 


[ 309 ] 


CHAPTER XXII 


T rent fancied that he saw a person moving on 
the moonlit desert, and he urged his horse for- 
ward, although he knew that he was, in all 
probability, following an illusion. Yet all at once the 
figure was nearer than he thought, and he saw that it 
was Yucca. 

He reached her, and drew up his horse. “ Where 
are you going ” he asked. 

She turned, startled. “ I am going to find the boys. 
I know where they are.” She pointed toward the 
mountains. “ They are there, near that cave halfway 
up the trail.” 

A shiver ran over him. She seemed like a desert 
spirit risen to show him the way. Her solemnity, her 
absolute confidence, impressed him, and her face, up- 
turned to his, was angelic in its faith. He himself 
had given up all hope, but he would not cross her. 

“ Tell me, if you can, just where you mean, my dar- 
ling,” he said, “ and I will ride on and look, if you 
will only go home and rest; but Lispenard and I 
searched there early this morning. I went nearly 
up to it, and called and called. Cozzens was ex- 
plicit in his direction not to escape going there. Yet 
[ 310 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 


he agreed with me that had they been so near, they 
would have been making their way home then. They 
would not perish of thirst in a single night.” 

“ I know ; but you did not find them. You did not 
go up far enough. This morning Mrs. Lispenard told 
me that she dreamed last night that the boys had gone 
away with a wolf,” she told him. 

“ Yucca, this desert drives people mad, as the moon- 
light does sailors. Why do you talk of wolves ” he 
said. But his heart sank. What if he had been care- 
less in his search.? He wished now that he had gone up 
and looked into the cave. 

“ Don’t you remember the night you and I sat out 
here in the desert.? ” she said, putting her hand on his 
bridle-rein to detain him ; “ and I pointed out Tiggy’s 
wolf to you, which I had promised him to feed.? It has 
been around here ever since. One afternoon I followed 
it to its cave, for it is quite tame — more like a dog than 
a wolf. Perhaps you remember that time Jim and Mr. 
Lispenard and you and I had our picnic in the moun- 
tain, the day we went up to the Aztec fort .? And while 
we were at lunch I pointed out that we were sitting in 
the mouth of some animal’s cave, because there were 
little bones about.? ” 

“ I went there only the other day,” he answered. 
He had gone to visit that place where they had once 
been, and to recall how the Indigo lizard had played 
about her white fingers, and her eyes had taken on the 
[ 311 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


colour of the lizard. “ Is that where you want me 
to go? ” 

She did not take her hand from his rein. 

“ Aren’t you going to let me go, my darling? ” he 
asked. 

She shook her golden head. 

“ Don’t you want me to go ? ” he said. His heart 
beat heavily. 

“ Does this mean that you love me ? ” he ended 
humbly. 

She let go the rein and put her hand up against his 
breast. It was such an appeal for comfort as a child 
might have made. He caught the little hand and 
kissed it with passionate tenderness ; then he bent down 
and put his arm about her and kissed her mouth, and 
their lips clung together in longing. 

She drew away. “ Ride on,” she cried, ‘‘ and I will 
follow fast ! ” 

“ I will fire the three shots if I find them,” he said. 
It was the signal set by Cozzens. He felt that it 
would be cruel to insist upon her returning home when 
she was so anxious. And, moreover, he was better con- 
tent to have her follow, that he might be near if she 
needed him. 

As he rode on he kept looking back, and saw her 
coming after. He saw her wave her hand, but soon 
her figure merged into the landscape, and he could not 
distinguish her from the cacti. But he had a sense of 
[ 312 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

great peace that she followed him, and, although he 
could no longer see her, he kept looking back. He had 
accepted the terrible fact that the boys could not pos- 
sibly have survived, but he was too dazed from lack of 
sleep, and too weary, to feel anything very keenly. 
He kept thinking of what Lispenard said, — that he 
was always conscious of the eternities in the desert, — 
and he felt as if he and Yucca had met a moment 
since in the spirit rather than in the flesh. The world, 
real and substantial, as he had known it, had dissolved, 
and his opinions and resolutions had gone with it. He 
no longer thought of their marriage, nor of her going 
away with him. 

He reached the base of the mountain, and left his 
horse standing while he ascended the familiar trail. 
Above him the moon poured her blue light down into 
that rocky chasm. He could see the porphyry-red of 
the mountains, the lichens yellow-grey. Terrible and 
desolate country, barren mountains upheaving from its 
breast, and voiceless underground rivers sinking to 
distant seas ! As he climbed the ridge, the sense of 
being utterly alone weighed upon him. The warmth 
of her lips no longer lay upon his ; humanity seemed 
never to have existed here. Yet once he had walked 
here in the sunlight with a girl whose eyes had been 
blue as the indigo lizard playing over her fingers! 
Now he wandered like a disembodied spirit. He 
called the names of the two boys again and again as 
[ 313 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


he neared the place where they had lunched that long- 
ago day, and the gigantic red walls roared the echo 
back at him. But suddenly a cry came mingling with 
the echo of his. It was like a miracle; the mountain 
rose strong and benign; the cold moonlight grew 
tender. The place had been a tomb. It was now be- 
come an asylum. 

He saw a childish figure threading its way down over 
the loose stones and boulders in the path, almost slip- 
ping in its eager haste to reach him. It was Tiggy. 
“ Here we are ! ” he cried. 

Trent caught him up in his arms, in his delight. 

“ Where is Jim.? ” 

“ He’s hurt his ankle, and can’t come ; but he heard 
you shouting,” answered Tiggy. He had grown thin 
in those two days, and Trent could feel his little heart 
beating like a bird’s with excitement. He set him 
down on his feet, and gave him a piece of bread out of 
the lunch he carried in his pocket. Tiggy ate it hun- 
grily, but he did not wish anything to drink. 

“We found water,” he said. 

“ I want you to go back and tell Jim I will soon be 
there,” said Trent ; “ but I must first go and fire off a 
signal to let them know you are found. If I fired here, 
I’m afraid the sound would be lost in the moun- 
tains.” 

Tiggy demurred. “ You will lose us again ! I will 
go with you.” 

[ 314 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

“ No ; Jim will become anxious, and think something 
has happened to you. Run back,” Trent insisted, and 
stood still a moment to watch him start. 

Every few steps Tiggy paused to look around. 
“ You will lose us again ! ” he shouted frantically. 
“ Why don’t you come with me.? ” 

“ Nonsense, run along,” called Trent, feigning a 
sternness he did not feel, as he watched the little fel- 
low plodding up. 

The child’s nerves were shaken beyond his control, 
and Trent’s refusal was like desertion, and flung ^him 
into a panic. Once he sat down, but he got up when 
Trent called to him, and climbed on. This friend 
whom he had always believed so kind was a terrible 
tyrant. Why was he driving him back.? 

“ He will lose us again,” panted Tiggy ; “ he will 
lose us again.” 

A shout came echoing down the mountain. Jim was 
growing anxious. 

‘‘ Hurry on, Tiggy,” called Trent again. Then he 
descended to the base of the mountains, and fired three 
times. It was the signal agreed upon should the boys 
be found living. 

The desert was still sleeping. There was yet no 
hint of dawn in the sky. He strained his eyes, but 
caught no glimpse of Yucca. She was as yet too far 
away. 

Three distinct shots answered his. His signal had 

[ 315 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

been heard, and a little later that second signal was an- 
swered by one yet more distant. Lispenard must soon 
hear the good news. 

The boys were found. 

Now that that blessed fact was established, his mind 
turned from them to Yucca. As he ascended the trail 
again, he found himself talking aloud to her, as though 
she were there, murmuring her name. Endearments 
rushed to his lips. It was she who had saved the boys 
— his darling, with her belief in dreams and visions. 
Were-wolves ! Trent laughed aloud. 

“ Ha, ha, ha ! ” came back the echo. 

It was as though a Titan joined in his mirth, and 
the rocks further away reverberated faintly. The 
place he thought a tomb was become a refuge, and now 
it rang with laughter. He was light-headed from fa- 
tigue and loss of sleep. But he was sobered when he 
finally reached Jim, and realised anew that the boys 
were saved. 

Jim sat leaning against the granite wall, his white 
face uplifted eagerly, his hand outstretched. “ I 
thought someone would come,” he said simply. His 
boyish bravado was gone. He seemed years older for 
the terrible experience he had undergone. 

Trent himself was deeply moved as he wrung the 
boy’s hand. “ What’s this Tiggy tells me about your 
ankle.? ” 

“ Oh, I’ve hurt it ; nothing serious. Where’s Coz- 

[ 316 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

zens?” Jim asked, scornful to make much of his 
wound. 

“ He’s coming. Didn’t you hear my signal.? It 
was answered,” replied Trent. “ Let me look at your 
foot.” 

But Jim refused. “ Cozzens ’ll bind it up in a jiffy 
when he comes.” 

At last the dawn was breaking, and in the strange, 
vibrant light of coming day and vanishing moonlight 
he could see the boy plainly, splendid in the haggard- 
ness which brought out lines of strength and maturity 
in his face. He thanked God that this boy had been 
spared to Lispenard. He fed him and Tiggy bits of 
bread soaked in wine and water. 

“ I wish you’d give me another piece,” said Jim. 
“ I’ll eat it slow. We’re almost starved. I bet Coz- 
zens put you up to giving me next to nothing. I’ve 
heard him talk.” 

“ He warned me to look out for you, that you’d 
fight like a devil,” Trent told him, and the boy laughed 
weakly. He looked as if he had been through a violent 
sickness. His face was white, his eyes inflamed, and 
he complained of a ringing in his ears. “ It’s the 
sand, I guess,” he said ; “ I hope I won’t be deaf.” 

Tiggy, fully calmed, put his hand on Trent’s knee, 
and looked up into his face, smiling. “ He’s in there,” 
he said, pointing to the cave. 

“ What does he mean.? ” Trent asked. 

[ 317 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

“ Oh, he means the wolf,” Jim answered. 

Trent was not a particularly imaginative man, but 
a thrill ran over him. Was there some truth in all 
this talk of dreams.^ Had not Yucca told him that 
Mrs. Lispenard dreamt her children were with a wolf.? 

He was conscious that Tiggy was calling at the 
mouth of the cave, but he was as one paralysed himself, 
and could not move. The only horror of the super- 
natural he had ever experienced fastened him to the 
place with invisible chains. And as if he were dream- 
ing, he heard Tiggy coaxing gently: 

“ Come, Lupus, Lupus. Come on out.” 

“ I named him,” said Jim in an aside. “ It’s Latin, 
you know. It’s my joke on Tiggy. He doesn’t know 
it means just wolf, and nothing else.” 

Trent stared helplessly at him. Were both the boys 
mad, or was he.? He had never really credited the 
story of Tiggy ’s pet. 

“ Lupus, Lupus,” said the little fellow. 

A pointed face, grey as the dawn, was thrust out 
from the cave along the ground. The eyes were 
bright and cunning; the head had the lean fierce- 
ness of all desert things. And yet Trent could have 
sworn those ferocious eyes were almost roguish, and he 
found himself staring into them, fascinated, breath- 
less. Thus a moment passed, and suddenly the head 
was raised, and a shaggy form went by him like a 
streak, and vanished. 


[ 318 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

“ See,” said Tiggy, holding up his finger ; “ Lupus 
has gone.” 

Trent took a swallow of the wine mixed with water, 
which he had brought for the boys. This night was 
proving too much for his nerves, and he felt that his 
own identity was at the vanishing point. 

“ We’d have been dead now, I guess, Mr. Trent, if 
it hadn’t been for him,” said Jim solemnly, still awed 
by the dangers they had encountered. “ Did you see 
that cloud coming.? It burst right over us. I thought 
we would choke to death.” 

“ I didn’t see Lupus, for Jim tied a handkerchief 
over my face,” put in Tiggy ; “ but something 
kept pressing against me as if it were frightened, too, 
and I felt with my hands and caught his fur.” 

“ I knew then we’d just got to stick to him,” Jim 
continued. “ Cozzens always told me if I were in trou- 
ble not to strike out for myself until I saw what the 
animals were going to do. But I guess he never 
thought we’d be following a wolf. Anyway, I’m 
pretty sure he’s half dog.” 

“ How did you manage to see him in all that blind- 
ing sand.? ” Trent asked, amazed. 

“ We didn’t,” said Jim, “ but he stayed with us, yet 
always just ahead, leading.” 

“ I kept my hand in the fur at his neck,” added 

Tiggy. 

“ When we finally got here, we just lay down and 

[ 319 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

couldn’t move, until Tiggy said he was thirsty. I 
knew what that meant.” Jim paused, shuddering. “ I 
knew water ’d got to be found. But once I got my 
bearings, I realised where we were, and that there was 
a water-pocket up the mountain a way, just off the 
trail. So I made Tiggy stay, and started out to 
find it.” 

“ And while he was gone lots of animals went by 
after him, and a jack-rabbit came in, and Lupus 
pounced on him and ate him up,” said Tiggy. “We 
ate the bones and crusts I brought out to feed the wolf 
with.” 

Belief in a deeper power than mere chance stirred in 
their listener. Surely a divine Providence had saved 
them from the simoon. A wolf had led them to this 
haven, where they had been safe all that day and 
night, while the terrible gale must have raged, hot as 
a furnace fire over and about them, but never quite 
touching them, save when it flung a handful of sting- 
ing sand in their faces. He thought of the animals 
which had skurried by them up the trail, seeking ref- 
uge, as in a greener country their kind fled the forest 
fires. 

“ How did you hurt your ankle? ” he asked. 

“ I’ve broken it, I guess,” Jim answered ; “ and the 
skin’s all scraped, dragging it around. I fell trying 
to get the water, and my leg just doubled under me. 
I tell you, Mr. Trent, you realise what a wind can be 
[ 320 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

when it’s strong enough to lift you off your feet and 
throw you down. It made me crazy-mad. I swore 
then I’d reach that water-pocket, and I got there, 
somehow.” 

“ I was thirsty,” said Tiggy placidly, leaning 
against their friend. He was so tired he could scarcely 
keep his eyes open, but he was content, and very proud 
of Jim. 

The dawn was banishing the moonlight. Above 
their heads the sky seemed very distant, and a pale, 
chill blue. 

Jim’s voice dropped to a whisper, and the look 
which crept into his eyes told Trent that the boy had 
known blackest horror. 

“ Once Cozzens found a prospector lying below 
that water-pocket — dead of thirst; and his fingers 
were worn to the bone trying to get to it over the rocks. 
He had torn all his clothes off him, too. That’s the 
way they do. I found a tin can there, and I drank all 
I could; and then I got in, for the water wasn’t deep 
at that season of the year. Then I filled the can and 
started back. It took me a long time to get back, try- 
ing to keep the water from spilling, and having a sore 
ankle. I just crawled and slid, and the skin is all off 
my shoulders. We had an awful night. I wrapped 
my shoes in my wet coat, for the leather held moisture, 
and put it back in the cave. When the water in the 
can gave out we just sucked the leather in my shoes.” 
[ S21 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ Then in the morning I went up, for Jim was too 
sore to move,” said Tiggy ; “ but I didn’t fall.” 

“ I will never trust him again,” said Jim angrily. 
“ I told him to take only ten swallows, and to come 
right back to me with the can. The wind had stopped 
blowing, and I knew he was safe enough. He came 
down acting queer, just like a drunk man. Why he 
didn’t spill all the water, I don’t know. After a while 
he lay down and went to sleep. And I slept, too, most 
of the morning. I was going to send him home for 
help, but I was afraid to. I couldn’t seem to make him 
wake up. So I kept waiting and listening all day, 
thinking someone would come, until it got too late to 
start. Then I had to send Tiggy again for more 
water. But to-morrow morning I was going to man- 
age to crawl down. I thought if the wolf could get 
along on three legs, I could with one and two 
arms.” 

He nodded solemnly. “ You needn’t have worried. 
I’d have found something to drink, somehow, even if 
I’d had to dig to water with my fingers, or I’d smashed 
a bull cactus with a stone and made Tiggy eat the 
pulp.” 

‘‘ Don’t talk any more about it now, Jim,” said 
Trent, seeing that the boy was becoming exhausted 
with excitement. “ Let’s think about getting you 
home.” He felt that he could never forgive himself 
for not looking further up the trail the morning be- 
[ S22 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

fore, in the first part of his and Lispenard’s search. 
He had shouted, but they must then have been asleep. 

“ I guess Cozzens ’ll come pretty soon,” said Jim. 
He hesitated a moment. “ How’s mamma taking it? ” 
“ She’ll be all right now,” answered Trent cheer- 
fully. ‘‘ Now, Jim, I’m going to leave you for a while. 
I must meet Miss Armes. It was she who sent me. She 
was walking, while I had my horse and reached you 
first. I’m going to make you a bit more comfortable 
now.” He took off his coat and folded it, and put it 
gently beneath the injured ankle. 

“ Oh, pshaw ! ” Jim protested ; “ you don’t have to 
molly-coddle me. You’d better take Tiggy down with 
you. I don’t mind being left, but send Yucca up to 
me as soon as she comes, won’t you ? And I guess I’ll 
take something more to eat.” 


[ 323 ] 


CHAPTER XXIII 


W HEN Trent, carrying Tiggy in his arms, 
reached the open desert at the foot of the 
mountain once more, the sky was warming, 
and the moon was a ghost of silver transparency in the 
blue. The air was so rarefied as to seem almost breath- 
less. Happiness had steadied his nerves and cleared 
his mind. He no longer thought of himself and 
Yucca as disembodied souls in a desolate land, but 
knew he was waiting there for his sweetheart. She 
had been pale beneath his kiss in the moonlight a short 
time ago, pale, and worn with suffering. Now, 
like the flushing east, she would grow rosy with mem- 
ory when she saw him. She might deny her love ; she 
could not deny that kiss of their meeting spirits. He 
was too tender to be triumphant that she had suc- 
cumbed, and he had a panic of anxiety lest he should 
not be able always to make the future smooth for her. 

While he waited for her coming across the dim land, 
with its confusing cacti, Tiggy curled himself up on 
the sand near by, and fell asleep, with his head pil- 
lowed on his arm. 

At last he saw her and went to meet her, and would 
have taken her to his heart had she not evaded him. 
[ 3 ^ 4 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

“ I knew you would find them,” she cried. Joy had, 
for the while, banished fatigue. Her face was like an- 
other moon in the dawning of day, white with a kind of 
transparency, her eyes full of shadowed light, and her 
hair blown about her head. 

She went down on her knees beside Tiggy, and hung 
over him as a guardian angel might, it seemed to 
Trent. 

“ Where is Jim F ” she asked. 

‘‘ Jim fell and hurt his ankle. He is waiting for 
you. I’ll take Tiggy home first, and then come back 
for him and you,” he answered. 

did not waken. There was something infi- 
nitely touching to them both in his confident slumber. 
He was so small in that great desert, yet of such sig- 
nificance. 

“ How like his father he is,” she said, looking up at 
Trent. 

“ He is a mysterious child to me,” he answered. “ I 
cannot tell you the strange shock it was when I found 
them. And the wolf was there, too, as you said.” 

‘‘ Oh, I never can forgive myself in not having 
thought of going there before, when I think of what 
it would have saved Mr. and Mrs. Lispenard. When 
she told me this morning that she dreamed her children 
were with a wolf, I was frightened, for I knew Tiggy 
had not told her of his friend. I kept thinking 

of it all day, and at last I started out. Then you 

[ 325 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

came ” She looked up at him shyly, and even in 

the white dawn he saw her rosy. 

He gazed down upon her, thinking how sweet 
women were. They who won love were the first to ca- 
pitulate. It was not in men to do so. 

Had Lispenard’s children died it would have been 
no reason to Trent why he should yield Yucca’s point 
that he live in Sahuaro. He had experienced one mo- 
ment of passionate impulse on the veranda the night 
before, when in the darkness he had reached out his 
arm for her, but this impulse would not have abided 
his sober later judgment. But he saw that for some 
indescribably sweet woman’s reason their mutual ter- 
rible experience had been all-sufficient for her to give 
up her own will. 

‘‘ W^hen all seemed sorrowful, and we thought the 
children dead, did you kiss me at last. Yucca, knowing 
I needed comfort? ” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said; “and I, too, wanted comfort.” 
She rose from beside little Tiggy and put her arms 
around her lover and bowed her head, weeping on his 
breast. “ It seemed to me I could not bear it if the 
boys died. I have known them ever since they were 
born, and I thought of poor Mr. and Mrs. Lispenard. 
I wished it had been I that was lost instead.” 

His heart stood still at the thought. “ And what 
of me. Yucca, if anything had happened to you? ” 
He had not thought her slender arms could have such 
[ 326 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 


power to cling. He kissed her shining hair again and 
again ; her face was hidden on his breast. 

The mountains were between them and the east, but 
the sky above was a-shimmer with palest rose, and in 
the distant west were long streaks of green. The des- 
ert was shadowy and full of illusions. The small bur- 
rowing animals which dared to come out only at night 
were to be seen playing about their holes, as though 
loath to go under the dark earth. Ground owls flut- 
tered along the sand; white-winged doves flew hither 
and thither, while in the tall cacti in which they nested 
the woodpeckers made a continual chatter. A jack- 
rabbit, with ears a-tremble and bright eyes, slipped 
through the grey brushwood. In the strange light 
Trent’s horse, feeding near by, looked monstrous and 
queer. 

“ How silent it is ! ” he said in a hushed tone. 

She raised her head, wondering. “ Don’t you hear 
the birds ” 

“ Yes; but, somehow, it only makes the real silence 
seem greater. Oh ! my dearest, don’t you see how aw- 
ful it is, this silence of the desert.? Come back to the 
East with me. Yucca; I cannot endure it here,” he 
said. 

She slipped away from him. “ Mr. and Mrs. Lis- 
penard are waiting while we delay.” 

“ Don’t leave me,” he said huskily, putting out his 
hand. In a moment she would be gone. He would 
[ 327 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

lose her in this land of dawn and shadow. Then he 
saw that she was startled, and it sobered him. “ I 
am light-headed from lack of sleep. I do not know 
what I am doing. Lispenard has heard the signal. 
He knows the children are safe now. Let me have a 
few minutes here with you.” 

But she would not come near him again. Did she 
wish to assume that all was as it had been before she 
took his bridle-rein and detained him, and raised her 
face to be kissed.^ Very well ; he would fall in with her 
mood. He saw that she had already repented, that he 
must woo her again and again. Perhaps he would 
never quite gain her in this life, although he knew that 
she would marry him. But she would always be more 
maiden than wife, forever slipping from his embrace 
back to the dreams of her girlhood, but always his, 
always returning to him. And this truth of their rela- 
tion appealed to the ideality deep beneath the grim- 
ness of his own nature. It swept him on beyond the 
bonds of earthly possession into their love eternal. 
Something of what was passing in his mind must 
have communicated itself to her, for she drew nearer 
him. 

His solemn dreaming was gone. He caught her in 
his arms ardently. He would not kiss her again if she 
did not wish it, but, like a great, foolish boy, he put 
his cheek to hers. 

“ Someone is coming,” she cried, blushing, strug- 

[ 328 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

gling; and he let her go, and turned to see a horse- 
man a distance off. 

“ Poor Jim ! ” she added. “ There he is waiting for 
me. Tiggy, dear, wake up.” She bent down and 
shook him gently, and he sat up, rubbing his smarting 
eyes and smiling drowsily at her. 

Trent whistled to his horse, and when the obedient 
animal came, lifted the little fellow on and then swung 
himself up behind him. 

“ Take care of yourself, my darling,” he said anx- 
iously ; “ be careful going up the trail. Some of the 
stones are loose. I will be back for you as soon as I 
can, and don’t let Jim eat anything more. He has 
had enough. I think I gave Tiggy too much wine. 
He seems about half-seas over.” He shook the reins, 
and glancing back saw that she lingered to see 
him go. 

The horseman hurrying toward him proved to be 
the old mission priest on his burro. Until then Trent 
had not known that he had been indefatigable in the 
search. 

He had heard the signal, and came hurrying to be 
of assistance. When he saw the actual living boy with 
Trent he gave a crooning sound and made the sign of 
the cross. 

“ Deo gratias,” he murmured. 

When Trent told him briefly how the wolf had saved 
the boys the priest was amazed. 

[S29] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


“ It is a miracle,” he said. Yet he made the sign 
of the cross in the air. 

“ Why do you do that, Father? ” asked Trent. 

“ It is both evil and good to be succored by a wolf. 
Some ill will happen. The devil mixes in the Lord’s 
work. Where is his brother? ” 

Trent laughed at the superstition of the priest. 
“ You will find the other boy up the Aztec trail. Miss 
Armes is with him. They will hear you if you call.” 

He rode on across the desert, to take Adele’s little 
boy home to her. A multitude of thoughts crowded 
into his mind. He remembered how he and Adele had 
trembled toward each other in their first meeting after 
so many years, and he wondered at the past tempta- 
tion, and was amazed that he had not foreseen from 
the first that he should love Yucca. 

The searchers who had heard his signal were begin- 
ning to arrive, but he refused to be delayed longer, 
and told the eager riders the mother must have the 
child soon. So one by one they rode on to see Jim, 
after Trent’s brief assurance that all was well, and his 
short explantion of the wolf. The Indian scouts were 
stolid, but the cowboys insisted on shaking Tiggy’s 
hand, and every man of them fired three shots from his 
revolver, until his ammunition was exhausted, and 
the air of the wide, shadowy desert was startled, and 
wild animals fled frightened. 

Before Trent were the outlying vegetable fields of 

[ 330 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

the Indian village, with their protecting hedges of 
upturned mesquite roots. He saw the doors of their 
adobe huts opening to the east, after the custom of 
their people, awaiting their Messiah. The blue smoke 
was rising from the hearths, and he noticed a squaw 
grinding corn between two flat stones. 

He rode directly through the village, to gain time, 
and the Indian children ran after him to catch a 
glimpse of the boy in his arms. 

Pie kept hearing the shots of the cowboys as they 
galloped toward the mountains, and it seemed like a 
bursting proclamation of joy. 

Lispenard, too, heard those shots, near and far, and 
he felt as if each one struck to his heart with the repeti- 
tion of a joy too great for him to bear. Adele, some 
hours since, had lain down and mercifully fallen 
asleep, and he sat beside her holding her hand. He 
shrank from waking her just yet, for he had no 
strength with which to meet her happiness. And it 
was well that she should rest. He had watched the 
glory of night pale into the grey of morning, and the 
roofs of the university buildings grow distinct against 
the dim horizon. He saw that the rosy light had crept 
past the zenith, and in the west were the cool greens he 
loved, and which he had never seen anywhere but on 
the desert. 

It seemed long to him before Cozzens came in with 
Tiggy in his arms. Returning from his own fruitless 
[331 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 


search, the mine owner had met Trent as he was en- 
tering the town. Trent followed him in now and shut 
and locked the door in the faces of those neighbours 
whose impulsive, kindly curiousity would have led them 
to pour into the house. 

“ Jim is all right,” said Cozzens huskily ; “ hurt his 
leg, that’s all. We’ll soon have him here, too.” 

Tiggy clung resolutely to his long-deferred slum- 
bers, and they put him on the lounge by his mother’s 
side. She stirred, sighing in her sleep, and raised her 
arm. When she let it fall it lay across Tiggy. 

Cozzens stepped softly across the room, and sat 
down and mopped his head with his handkerchief. His 
flannel shirt was open on his big chest, and his ruddy 
colour gone in the dust which covered him. He wished 
to go to Jim, yet he could not bring himself to leave 
liispenard in these moments of mutual thanksgiving. 
His friendship with this man would always mean more 
than a woman’s love to Cozzens. Love to him was al- 
ways more or less a self-indulgence in women’s flattery, 
which, in his better moods, he scorned. He was ex- 
hausted but content. The desert had been outwitted 
again. His eyes, bulging with fatigue, rolled in in- 
dulgent contempt from Lispenard to Trent. “ You 
two was a pretty pair to send on that search,” he 
drawled. “ There, I told you to look particular up 
that trail, and you didn’t because you thought it was 
too near home ! ” 


[ 332 ] 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

Lispenard sat still. His strength was gone. But he 
listened with a smile of mingled humour and pride to 
Trent’s brief recital of his sons’ experience. The story 
of the wolf’s veritable existence was amazing to him. 

“ They should found a city, after such an adventure, 
as Romulus and Remus did,” he commented. 

His smile passed into a frown of pain. He felt one 
of his terrible heart attacks coming on. He who had 
once been so indifferent a father now felt that the joy 
of his children’s recovery would kill him. His lips 
moved dumbly, and he put out his hand to Trent, who 
was nearest him. But Cozzens was at his side first, and 
had him at the open window in a minute, with brandy 
at his lips. 

“ I guess I aint nursed this family all these years for 
nothing,” said the big frontiersman grimly. 

Lispenard stood leaning against him, deathly white, 
his lips blue. His soul sought to retain possession of 
its frail earthly tenure, and finally life all-glorious 
came back to him. 

The first sun rays struck the university buildings, 
and his poor, strained heart warmed to the ideals for 
which they stood. Above all, must those doors of 
learning send forth men, rather than scholars — men 
like Cozzens, like Trent. 

The world should learn to what a race the beautiful 
desert could give birth ! 

He turned to his friend with the smile which made 

[333 ] 


THE VOICE IN THE DESERT 

Cozzens worship him. “ My dear fellow,” he said 
faintly, “ we must keep the spirit fresh in the hearts of 
our young men. They must love the adventure of 
life.” 

His hand tightened on Cozzens’s sleeve, and he 
swayed. 

Lispenard had gone to seek that fuller adventure of 
the spirit in whose existence he so fondly believed. 


THE END. 


[ 334 ] 


9[rti)ur ^tantocoti ^ler 

Author of “The Pedagogues’* 

THE TRIUMPH 

r 

The TRIUMPH has fire and pathos and 
romance and exhilarating humor. It is a cap- 
ital story that will keep a reader’s interest from 
the first appearance of its hero, the young doc- 
tor Neal Robeson, to his final triumph — his 
triumph over himself and over the lawless, tur- 
bulent oil-drillers, his success in his profession 
and in his love affair. It displays a delightful 
appreciation of the essential points of typical 
American characters, a happy outlook on every- 
day life, a vigorous story-telling ability working 
in material that is thrilling in interest, in a set- 
ting that is picturesque and unusual. The 
action takes place in a little western Pennsyl- 
vania village at the time of the oil fever, and a 
better situation can scarcely be found. Mr. 
Pier’s account of the fight between the out- 
raged villagers and the oil-drillers around a 
roaring, blazing gas well is a masterpiece of 
story telling. 

lllmtrations hy W. D. Stevens 
Cloth 12mo $1.50 

0^cClut;e, a Co. 



fames WtUx iCmn 

Author of “ The Second Generation ’* 

THE CHAMELEON 

r 

The author uses as his theme that trait in 
human nature which leads men and women to 
seek always the lime light, to endeavor always 
to be protagonists even at the expense of the 
truth. His book is a study of that most inter- 
esting and pertinent type in modern life, the 
sentimentalist, the man whose emotions are 
interesting to him merely as a matter of experi- 
ence, and shows the development of such a 
character when he comes into contact with 
normal people. The action of the novel passes 
in a college town and the hero comes to his 
grief through his attempt to increase his ap- 
pearance of importance by betraying a secret. 
His love for his wife is, however, his saving 
sincerity and through it the story is brought to 
a happy ending. 

Cloth, 12mo $1.50 


& Co. 



JT* ilason 


Author of “ To the End of the Trail” 


THE BLUE GOOSE 

r 

The life of the miner, with its hours of wild 
living above ground, the dominating influence 
of the greed for gold, and the reckless gambling 
spirit that is its very basis offers grateful mate- 
rial to the teller of stories. Mr. Nason has 
taken full advantage of the opportunity and of 
his intimate knowledge. He has written a tale 
of cunning and villany thwarted by dogged 
honesty, in which a mine superintendent is in 
conflict with his thieving and vicious employees. 
The sweetness and charm of an unspoiled, win- 
some girl brighten the story. To her steadfast, 
romantic love for the superintendent is due his 
final triumph. 


Cloth, 12rao 


$1.50 


Sl^cClwe, & Co. 


9lrnolli SSennett 

Author of “The Great Babylon Hotel” 

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 


Probably no story of the year is so simply 
and yet so artistically told as this one. It 
portrays the development of a sweet and nat- 
ural girl’s character, amid a community of strict 
Wesleyan Methodists in a Staffordshire town. 
How her upright nature progresses with con- 
stant rebellions against the hypocrisy and cant 
of the religionists, by whom she is surrounded, 
is brought out by the author faithfully and 
with great delicacy of insight. Many will love 
Anna, and not a few will find something in her 
to suggest “Tess of the Durbervilles.” The 
plot is extremely simple, but the reader will 
find a surprise in the last chapters. 


The English letter from W. L. Alden, in the New York 
Times Review says : 

“It will be promptly recognized by the critics whose 
opinion is worth something as the most artistic story of the 
yearJ" 


Cloth, 1^0 


$1.50 


fll^cCiure, a co. 



35^ Ctiit!) W^att 

Author of “ Every One His Own Way” 

TRUE LOVE 
A Comedy of the Affections 

r 

Here commonplace, every-day, ordinary 
people tread the boards. The characters whom 
Miss Wyatt presents are not genuises, or heroes, 
or heroines of romance, but commonplace 
persons with commonplace tricks and comnion- 
place manners and emotions. They do roman- 
tic things without a sense of romance in them, 
but weave their commonplace doings into a 
story of great human interest that the reader 
will find far from commonplace. The vein of 
humorous satire, keen, subtle and refined, per- 
meating the story and the characterization, sets 
this work of Miss Wyatt’s in a class by itself. 

Cloth, 12mo $1.50 


& Co. 


^eutnas JEcJEanus 

Author of “ Through the Turf Smoke ” 


“A LAD OF THE O’FRIEL’S” 

r 

This is a story of Donegal ways and customs ; 
full of the spirit of Irish life. The main char- 
acter is a dreaming and poetic boy who takes 
joy in all the stories and superstitions of his 
people, and his experience and life are thus 
made to reflect all the essential qualities of the 
life of his country. Many characters in the 
book will make warm places for themselves in 
the heart of the reader. 


Cloth, 12mo 


$1.50 


flt^cCiure, i^i^uwpsi a co. 


3^. Crockett 

Author of “The Banner of Blue,” “The Firebrand” 

FLOWER O’ THE CORN 

r 

Mr. CROCKETT has made an interesting 
novel of romance and intrigue. He has chosen 
a little town in the south of France, high up 
in the mountains, as the scene for his drama. 
The plot deals with a group of Calvinists who 
have been driven from Belgium into southern 
France, where they are besieged in their moun- 
tain fastness by the French troops. A number 
of historical characters figure in the book, 
among them Madame de Maintenon. 

“ Flower o’ the Corn ” is probably one of Mr. 
Crockett’s most delightful women characters. 
The book is notable for its fine descriptions. 

Cloth, 12mo $1.50 


iSl^cClure, & Co. 



JE. fmla? Cajlor 

Author of “ The House of the Wizard” 

THE REBELLION OF THE 
PRINCESS 

r 

A BOOK that is a story, and never loses the 
quick, on-rushing, inevitable quality of a story 
from the first page to the last. Stirring, 
exciting, romantic, satisfying all the essential 
requirements of a novel. The scene is laid in 
Moscow at the time of the election of Peter the 
Great, when the intrigues of rival parties over- 
turned the existing government, and the meet- 
ing of the National Guard made the city the 
scene of a hideous riot. It resembles in some 
points Miss Taylor’s successful first story, “On 
the Red Staircase,” especially in the date, the 
principal scenes and the fact that the hero is a 
French nobleman. 

Cloth, 12mo $1.50 


fllpcClwe, & Co. 


By g'lian 3Sutlocfe 

Author of “ The Barrys,” “ Irish Pastorals ” 

THE SQUIREEN 

r 

Mr. bullock takes us into the North of 
Ireland among North-of- Ireland people. His 
story is dominated by one remarkable character, 
whose progress towards the subjugation of his 
own temperament we cannot help but watch 
with interest. He is swept from one thing to 
another, first by his dare-devil, roistering spirit, 
then by his mood of deep repentance, through 
love and marriage, through quarrels and sepa- 
ration from his wife, tc a reconciliation at the 
point of death, to a return to health, and 
through the domination of the devil in him, 
finally to death. It is a strong, convincing 
novel suggesting, somewhat, The House with 
the Green Shutters.” What that book did for 
the Scotland of Ian Maclaren and Barrie, “ The 
Squireen ” will do for Ireland. 

Cloth, 12mo $1.50 


Sl^cClwe, & Co. 



(Jleorge Bouglas 


THE HOUSE WITH THE 
GREEN SHUTTERS 

r 

A STORY remarkable for its power, remark- 
able for its originality, and remarkable for its suc- 
cess. The unique masterpiece of an unfortunate 
young author, who died without knowing the 
unstinted praise his work was to receive. The 
book portrays with striking realism a phase of 
Scottish life and character new to most novel- 
readers. John Gourlay, the chief personage in 
the drama, inhabitant of the ‘‘ House With 
the Green Shutters” and master of the village 
destinies, looms up as the personification of the 
brute force that dominates. He stands apart 
from all characters in fiction. In the broad 
treatment and the relentless sweep of its trage- 
dy, the book suggests the work of Dumas. 

“ If a more powerful story than this has been written in 
recent years we have not seen it. It must take first 
honors among the novels of the day.” 

— Philadelphia Item. 

“ One of the most powerful books we have seen for a 
long time, and it marks the advent of a valuable writer.” 

— New York Press. 

$1.50 

jncClure, & co. 





i-f 


■'■" M'-K ‘'I'^^-J • '#!'■ 

i ■ dam vmav^ - ■ . '■• ^-.\ ■'* 

... .■>> 




.7- *—'•'«■•.• 

77 




.'f . . 


. •' ' -Vm I. •’ 

JV fc. * 1 

rA.'i-'i’:’’' ..: ■ '] 

' ' . ■• 'V ^ \«" -Vi • 


’'^:4 -.7,, ,;&...;M; ■ 




' r . . < 4,^'- • . 

Zi^’k re ' , ' 


\’ » 


• . < 


Ia r 




^ 7 * 


y 


if 


1% ;^• 












* $ 


%'^vii'' . ,.;■ 

;;.V-A.‘, ■■ ■ 



... 

rt ’ f •'^K” *' ,•■' *' ■ '( ' . •! f' -'/• ^ 

KS . */,• .■> ' ' - • • /, ^ ^ 


r-r ' 

«#« 


(. i 


> t I 

> “ ' 1 . ' ' 

••V. • 


•i 


V . L-* 


i- ^ 





'•i ^ 


4 



43 £; 


't * 


• 41 


:V'’ 


.-• V ► 4\- ", 


'm • , *»%<• 

• ' ^ ■ .*> V • ^ , 

r.; . 


I. •’ . % 

V W'-t”’. 


;.C'* 


•• 

. /- 




S .2 




..• •- . /'^vrw*- 

■ / 'V 

-r 

• • ' ‘ J '• -0 • , 

iW’^ - v /-'. 


• > I ' 


!CS 3 IS;>^- ■ 

■iniMM” 

^:V • • '• ..V .•^-.. . ; ■\..’ t . 

DL ■ .•^'*'- f ■ J . .*, * ■• ir •->**• V* ’• •' • . • ■< 

;■•»>•■ MV... -Vt •• 


r . t •■ • ■ -4 ' , 

• ‘ • .J, 

»' 

• 

' fr • 
«> 

. ■< 

• i • - 

' > * •• 

V 

■ 

• Vt; 


«• ■ 

• 

- ^ L V - . t 

■ ' ■ *• ■ 
•' »'W'. f 

** 

» . 1 

' ' 


*'•« TWJW.W I > '( ' 

qk 3 S 7 ' 4 '. .Fx /MmS . .N ' / 


V 


»W< 



^ ^ .^5 .f> rv-.. V . 

. / ■, ^• ./ . " .V ^ 

• ■ , ^ • ^ ’ - ,<C--v‘» - • . ' • 

* -■ W*'* T It<.'. J . •. i. L'«SC • j » 














l.^« ■•ri./ ■ i* ' ■- • I • 





,8" >.< 


‘■•4 ; 


■ >v; 


' I. 

, i 


/ 

« 


■- *’. 




r •* 


r> 


<. 

t 


,v. 

..>■ 


1 . V • ' 


• ' I- v/ 

■ '»r,' 



;> V.- y 

■■'■ V Y# 


•4. 

1 •• < 


■^ r 

* «■ V 


V > 


) • 


I. 

I ' 


-- ^• 

4 • 


• f 


;^ 4 • 

» 


•• 

1 ., 


t . 




r 

*■ 


•V/ . 

•» . 





1 I 




• ' ;wi* .s . V* "i 

• • '■■* *. t ■ i ’ ' . 


, >• 

'r! 




. . <v 

X . vs'* 


4 • 



•Mv-" 


/“'• '•' 




• » I , 

I * . < ' • 4 4 

• » . •• >-*■ ' » . ' • , 



c" , 




















